A more relaxing side to Nepal

13th - 16th June 2012

End of trekking - 13th June

Since we have being in China and unable to access the blog we have being a bit lazy about updating it so I am currently going back on 10 days (whoops!) to when we just finished trekking and left for Nepal's capital Kathmandu. So we finished trekking on Wednesday 13th June and went back to the town of Pokhara to chill out in the most normal, westernised place we have come across since we left Ireland. By the way I am glad I wrote my experience of the whole trekking while I was in the middle of it and showed my true feelings because time has given me a new romantic, rose tinted view where I am thinking, well it wasn't that bad and I'm glad I did it. Sorta like what I hear happens after childbirth.....

We also learned from our guide on the last day of the trek that marijuana grows 'wild' all over Nepal but people wouldn't smoke it cos that is illegal (ya right!) except for one day of the year when it is allowed to celebrate a religious festival!!

So the next day we left for Kathmandu, the capital. Another excruciating journey where 200km took 6 hours!! We stopped for a break after 1.5hours and lunch 1.5hours later, who needs lunch at 11am?!  Loved Kathmamdu, small city and we could walk everywhere. The people were lovely and so friendly and helpful.

We spent our second day here sightseeing.  Before we arrived in Nepal we were warned about the political instability here at the moment (no Mam & Marlene we didn't think we should enlighten you both to this development!) so it wasn't the best time to visit but we decided to 'risk' it. Basically the country is due an election and there is no constitution as the coalition government can't agree on it. So anyways loads of people said it to us about the political unrest blah blah so as we were out sightseeing we came across a political protest .... I can hear you all gasp wondering how we got through it but honestly the pensioners protesting over the medical cards in Ireland a few years looked more in danger of doing damage than the group of Nepali people we saw....

We have become experts at killing time efficiently since we have being away. The following day we had to check out of our hotel in the morning and we were waiting around to get the plane to China at 11.30pm that night (Sat 16th). But we actually had a great day shopping, eating, drinking mojitos (the Nepali in Kathmandu being as good at making them as their Pokhara counterparts). Good times and we were both sad to say So Long to Nepal but excited about China.

The plane journey was funny for two reasons;
- firstly they put us on a bus to get to the plane, grand Ryanair do it all the time but the plane was LITERALLY 20 steps of a walk from the terminal building and we all had to queue to get on a sweaty bus
- secondly (bear in mind we were flying at 23.30 at night) 20 mins into the flight they landed out with a big curry dinner!! Who eats dinner at that hour?? Everyone else on the flight couldn't get enough of it you would swear they hadn't a bite all day. We had to get 2 flights to get around the Himalayans and got another meal on the second flight too! Some novelty after flying Ryanair for years although that was some weird chinese breakfast so we didn't eat that either and got to our hotel starving after not eating for almost 24 hours....

Despite Ronan getting sick of the sound of his own voice saying 'we are on honeymoon' and giving up telling everyone we ended up getting upgraded to Premium class for the second flight. It didn't mean too much except for more leg space and free water but was nice anyways!

Our visit to the Monkey Temple