TravelStream™ news feed for member ali_m on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/ali_m en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:30:26 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/2/1221390300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/2/1221390300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/2/1221390300/tpod.html Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:30:26 -0400 Souks, drugs and rock 'n roll

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Cairo, Egypt

After a couple of nights in Alex there wasn't really much to do apart from head back to the capital to wait for our flight. In retrospect we should have planned it better in the first place - we could probably have managed to fit in a trip to Aswan or Luxor, or at the very least seen Siwa oasis by bus from Alexandria, but in the end we figured it was too late. Really I don't have a lot more to add about Cairo. Spent more time in ahwahs, drank more coffee, smoked more shisha, got hassled a bit more (I was actually complimented on my ability to cross the road from one guy - "You walk just like an Egyptian, straight across! You know the rules!" - who subsequently tried to sell me some hash)...

Yesterday we walked down into Islamic Cairo, which is incredibly congested (even walking down the pavement is a challenge in itself). The markets were interesting in a picturesquely-squalid kind of way, though I don't really feel I saw anything particularly new, since the bazaars in Istanbul were about the same or maybe even a bit nicer. Lots of powdered spices for sale, perfumes, blokes making shishas, mosques etc.

The plan for today (at least for me, anyway) was to take a boat trip down the Nile to the Nile Barrages, described as the 'Coney Island' of Egypt. I kind of fancied a trip down the Nile anyway, since it's something I feel I've maybe missed out on. Sadly it wasn't to be, since the boats don't seem to be running. There were some people sleeping on the quay, but the boats weren't going anywhere. Again, I blame Ramadan for wrecking my fun!

So now I'm just killing time in an internet cafe, reading my massive (and incredibly depressing) biography of Mao, and maybe thinking of heading down to Garden City later on. Egypt has been pretty good at times, but now it's starting to drag a bit and Ill be glad to board my flight home tomorrow.
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St Catherine, Egypt

It looked for a while like we might not even bother with climbing the mountain. The original plan was to do a DIY trip there and back, taking the local bus there, wandering around the monastery to kill time for a while, then climbing up in the early evening to catch sunset. We'd sleep on top of the mountain, catch the sunrise and head back down, grap some breakfast maybe, then back to Dahab. Seemed reasonable until we found out from some guy at the hostel (we weren't even sure if he was actally part of the staff or just someone who hangs around there a lot) and then from the guy at the ticket booth (after a half hour wait while he leisurely served customers whilst chatting on the phone) that there is no local bus service to St Catherine for the foreseeable future. This left us pretty pissed off and more than a little paranoid - our hostel offers Mt Sinai tours by minibus, and we were half wondering whether the guy from the hostel called ahead to tell the guy at the ticket booth not to let us get on a bus to Sinai so we could be roped into a tour with the hostel...

As it turned out, if there was a plot it worked, since we did end up paying for a tour from our hostel (only because it was the cheapest, same reason we do anything at our hostel...). These tours follow a very rigid, slightly stupid itinerary, involving climbing the mountain in the middle of the night, getting effectively no sleep, then, as soon as you see the sunrise, rushing down, doing a whistle-stop tour of the monastery then getting back on the bus by 10am. I really don't see much point in climbing a bloody mountain at 3 in the morning - you don't see anything and it means you get no sleep at the top. As it turned out, sleep was pretty much out of the question, since about 500 Russians plus assorted Brits, Germans, French etc had been bussed in (mainly from Sharm) and all planned on cramming themselves onto the summit to catch those first rays of sunlight. The Russians were the funniest - most of the women were hilariously inappropriately dressed (a) for climbing the mountain (plenty of them were wearing basically high heels) and (b) for touring round a monastery (plenty of slightly overweight Slavic women in sequined boob tubes and tight leopardskin-effect miniskirts).

The whole thing was a total circus - the whole path up the mountain was a procession of sweaty-faced package tourists puffing their way up and waving their bloody torches in my eyes whenever I tried to overtake them. Every few hundred metres there was a 'rest stop' which seemed to be mainly another excuse to concentrate masses of tourists, camel-rental guys and military-grate halogen lights. There isn't really anywhere to sleep at the top, so we had to scrape away some gravel, broken glass and cigarette butts to set up our sleeping bags, which was pretty pointless anyway, because the slow-moving masses we had overtaken on the way up were just arriving shining their torches in my face and kicking dust into my eyes!

The sunrise itself was crazy too - everyone was jostling to get as close as possible to the edge of the stone walls around the chapel at the summit, holding their cameras in the air trying to get a shot of the sun just as it was rising. I found it was much more interesting to take pictures of the crowd, which included a lot of orthodox Russians, some nuns who sang as the sun came up and one guy who everybody was muttering about - he had short bleached-blonde hair, a long black leather trenchcoat with a black shirt underneath, round purple sunglasses and an iron cross round his neck. He was universally referred to as 'the Nazi', though I don't think he was that bothered by the looks he was getting, since he mostly just stood nonchelantly listening to his iPod and nodding his head.

As the sun came out more fully, most of the crowd actually started to head down, whilst at the same time the view got a lot better. As we started to descend ourselves the side-lighting from the low sun made the whole landscape look incredible. The inside of the monastery at the bottom wasn't really worth that much of a look, which was just as well, since all 500 Russians plus extras all wanted to go in at once through a tiny door. To be honest, if we'd got the local bus to St Catherine at 9:30am we'd have run out of stuff to do pretty quickly before we climbed the mountain. I suppose we did get to see (even touch!) the 'genuine' burning bush...

The bus ride back was stupid hot - opening the window actually made things worse since the air coming off the scorched desert was like a hairdryer. The desert landscape that we'd missed on the night drive up was pretty spectacular though.

Well, now I'm shattered - I've had no sleep last night and we're about to take the night bus to Cairo, then on to Alexandria if I can make it through.
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Cairo, Egypt

Well, there was a reason why the flights only cost 300 return - it was a red-eye journey in every sense of the word. Left the house at 1:30am on the 25th and had pretty much no sleep till about 12pm the next day. Cairo is loud, polluted and huge.

Flying in the city looks more like a computer-generated texture stuck in the middle of the desert rather than anything real. The thousands of almost identical high-rise blocks in drab sandy-brown bristle all over the urban sprawl, and the pyramids looked dark and mysterious with the sun behind them casting a shadow through the smog... Yeah, the smog - Cairo is probably second only to Beijing in the air pollution stakes. The streets are rammed full of old fiats and skodas to whom lanes don't mean anything, and who may or may not screech to a stop for you as you cross the road, their tyres leaving thick black marks like boot polish on the hot tarmac.

From the moment we touched down at the airport we were, quite predictably, besieged by taxi touts. Having been in China we thought it couldn't be that much of a challenge not knowing the language, but Arabic numbers make things way more difficult - try catching the right bus from the airport, for example, if you only have the number and a very vague idea of where it should go!

It took a good 2-3 hours of demoralising trek around downtown Cairo in 40o heat to find a decent place to stay, whilst (obviously) getting harassed constantly by more touts. The worst part is that they try to guilt-trip you into thinking you are the one being rude to them - we had one guy following us for the best part of an hour (we just took random turns to try to throw him off) who said "Hey, man, look at me - I'm a human being, you know!". When we eventually lost him he muttered something about all us "Americans" being arrogant. Bastard. Fortunately many Egyptians who try to make conversation in the street are just genuinely being friendly (we even had some army officers come chat to us on the metro), and even those who are trying to sell you something know when to take a hint!

Yesterday we checked out the Egyptain Museum, which had some pretty impressive stuff, but I guess there's only so many priceless artifacts you can see in a day. After that we had coffee and a sheesha and decided to take the metro down to the coptic part of Cairo (the ancient Christian district). Unfortunately everything was closed, but it was still pretty interesting to wonder down the side alleys and shoot some pictures. Because there were no tourists we didn't get hassled at all around there, which was a nice change. We still don't quite have the hang of ordering food but so far a diet of falafels and shwarma with the occasional ridiculously greasy fiteer hasn't done much harm.

Got up crazy-early this morning (6:30am, so I only had about 4hrs sleep) to see the pyramids at Giza. Again it was a bit of a mission getting there by metro and taxi, plus it didn't help that the driver tried to direct us to some dodgy camel rental shop, causing us to miss the entrance and trapse around the walled complex for about half an hour, getting constantly offered horse and camel rides. Some rich Saudis were there with their bright yellow hummers, and they seemed to be chasing each other up and down the strip on horseback, spraying each other with some kind of soapy foam (I don't get what that was about...).

Finally we got in and had a wonder around the Sphynx and the Great Pyramid. It was interesting and all, and I don't regret seeing them, but I suppose when you've seen so many pictures of the monuments they never seem quite as impressive as you'd expect in real life. It didn't help that the air was so polluted you could hardly see the damn things from 100m away (you can see how bad the air was from the pictures).

We caught a packed bus back into downtown Cairo and took the metro to the bus station to book tickets to Dahab. The bus leaves at 12:15am, which means we'll get there bloody early in the morning, but it's better than arriving in the middle of the night without a hostel booking. I'll be glad to leave Cairo for somewhere a bit more quiet and relaxing where you don't get hassled all of the time and you don't feel like you're constantly poisoning yourself by breathing the air! I still have a lot of time to kill before the bus goes, so I'm just sat in an internet cafe checking my email - annoyingly my card reader seems to be overheating or something, so I can't upload any pictures. Next update will be from Dahab...
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Alexandria, Egypt

By the time we got to Alexandria I had not really slept in over two days (on account of Mt Sinai/the Dahab-Cairo night bus) so I was barely even conscious when the bus full of yuppie Cairenes pulled up at about noon. This was, of course, followed by the ritual of dragging our rucksacks from place to place in the blazing heat trying to find a decent room. This was made more annoying given the fact that Alex has no hostels or dorm rooms - the budget end consists entirely of decrepit old hotels, whose owners buck the Egyptian trend by not allowing any debate over the room rate.

The one we settled on was on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of an old colonial style building. The lift that occasionally came about 10mins after you hit the call button (sometimes requisite with a little guy in a shabby uniform and hat who came in and pressed the button for you - I think he gave up when we didn't tip him the first time) was impressively dodgy. While in motion a tinny loudspeaker in the lift plays what sounds like Arabic prayers, perhaps against the thing breaking down. Like many Egyptian lifts there is no inner door, so as the thing is travelling you can see the doors to the other floors as they move past. Many have dusty, broken windows and open onto floors of the building that seem to have been abandoned some time ago. On the gaps between the floors, someone has written the floor numbers on the side of the lift shaft in magic marker. Despite the state of the building, the hotel is by far the most reputable place we've stayed in so far - it's clean, fairly bright and does in fact come with a sea view and a tiny balcony.

My birthday yesterday wasn't exactly a huge party - I slept until about 8pm, went out and had fattah at an Egyptian restaurant (a super dense stew made with beef, rice and soggy bread), then had cake and coffee at an old cafe-patisserie. Whoop whoop! Today we hit up the Bibliotheque Alexandria, the huge modern library that's supposed to be a cultural centre for Alexandria. The building was undeniably pretty impressive, and some of the exhibits were kind of interesting, but in the end there's only so much you can do in a library if you are just a tourist. Mostly I enjoyed the air con in the huge reading hall. We also checked out the National Museum, which was, frankly, more of the same stuff as in the one in Cairo, although presented better and with better air con. Tonight I'm planning on scoping out some of the bars further up the waterfront, and maybe tommorrow we'll see the catacombs and the fort.

Alexandria is a little cooler than Cairo, and its streets are noticeably cleaner and the buildings are a bit nicer. It's supposedly famous for its cafe culture, though since it's Ramadan, all the Egyptian coffee houses are closed during the day, so you can't just hang around and have a coffee and a shisha by the waterfront to kill time. I'm starting to get really sick of Ramadan. It is always possible to find food and drink in the middle of the day somewhere, but it usually means that all the best local places are closed due to lack of customers (unless you can afford to eat in a hotel), and we're pretty much forced to go to Gad, a chain of Egyptian fast food places, for a burger or felafels to take out for lunch. Even more irritating, the beer shop seems to be completely closed over Ramadan...
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Ras Mohammad National Park, Egypt

The current was even stronger at Ras Mohammad, and if anything the wind and waves had picked up. We were told to gear up and wait on the platform at the stern of the boat until we were told to dive in. Someone obviously screwed up the signal - someone shouted "Dive, Dive, Dive!", but I hesitated for a moment. "Go on, dive!", then a second two late, "Stop, wait!". Myself and another diver were already in the water, but the boat had started to drift dangerously close to Yolanda Reef, and powered up its engines. Next minute we were alone in the water. We looked at each other and just kind of shrugged.

The boat came back a couple of minutes later and disgorged the rest of the divers - we had to fin hard against the current to rejoin the group. Looking down I could see that we'd been dropped almost directly on top of the wreck of the Yolanda. It's far less glamourous cargo of toilet bowls was strewn over the reef. Hovering above were big shoals of what I think were some kind of sea bream, plus some ghost pipe fish at the bottom.

Given that this was supposed to be a drift dive it was a bit annoying that the first thing we did once we descended was to swim hard against the current. It was very hard to make any headway, and I was sucking down my air pretty quickly. Our patience was rewarded by getting a close look at some blue-spotted stingrays, a turtle and a huge lizardfish. As we started to drift with the current we saw a moray eel bigger than my thigh poking its head out from under some coral. We drifted out to where the reef dropped away sharply, then swam along a reef wall to our right. You could tell the reef was in far better condition than at Dahab - there were far more fish and soft corals and the visibility was better.

The dive was annoyingly short - I finished with a full 90 bar left in my tank. I think this had something to do with the fact that most of Mohammad's group seemed to have joined ours for some reason, and our divemaster was stressing out since he suddenly had about 10 divers to look after rather than just six. I would have liked to stay longer at Ras Mohammad, but I guess I can't really complain about value for money...
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Gulf of Suez, Egypt

Taxi from Dahab to Sharm at 11:00pm, then grab whatever sleep you can on an old nylon sleeping bag on the deck of the dive boat at dock. The engines start rumbling at 5am and you get underway, and soon the boat is pitching up and down in the waves. The engine breaks down and some guy in a greasy t-shirt gets it going again. By 9am you can just about make out the destination by the cluster of white dive boats on the horizon. Breakfast is hearbreakingly crappy - some fuul paste, hard bread and bully beef that tastes like catfood. The divemaster who is missing the tip of his thumb gives a briefing of the first dive, then you gear up whilst he is tying the boat off against the wreck underwater.

The sea is ROUGH - there is a 50 day wind this time of year (called the Khamsa I think) and the descent line jerks violently as you edge down it. The rope is tied off close to the bridge of the boat, but it is rubbing afainst the sharp metal edge of the superstructure, and you can see its strands fraying and snapping, which is pretty worrying. On the way up you find out that it did, indeed, snap, and the dive boat has spun 180 degrees whilst still held by the line at the stern.

The wreck is huge - a WWII British cargo ship carrying war supplies sunk by a bomb from a German long-range bomber. The bomb fell in the ammunition hold, tearing off the stern. The contents of the ammo hold are a jumble of metal boxes. A crate of shells protrudes, and the divemaster wipes the algae off the bright brass firing plate to reveal the serial no. and date (1921). At the stern are two large encrusted AA guns, guarded by a fat stonefish the size of my forearm. The propellor is considerably taller than me. On the deck to either side of the front cargo hold two railway wagons are laid up. At the bow there is a series of doors that give access to the winch room - you go in then exit through a narrow hatch in the ceiling. The divemaster's sign for "the bow" is a parody of the scene from the Titanic - arms spread out and head thrown back. Apparently some Israeli guys insisted on recreating the moment on a previous dive.

The water is so rough on the way up you have to hold on with both hands to the ascent line which wrenches you up and down through the water. Your mask starts to leak and you must let go of the line with one hand to clear it. Some guy further down the line loses his reg.

After a break, plus a much more appetising lunch (not all of the Muslim staff are observing Ramadan that strictly...) it's time to go inside the wreck. Despite the tons of metal over your head it's fairly easy to move around the cargo holds due to the sheer size of the space. There are racks of motorcycles, the glass of their headlamps encrusted but still intact. Although the roofs of the trucks and jeeps have rusted away, and their seats reduced to bare metal, their windscreens are largely in one piece. A dislodged inspection panel allows you to stick your head in to find that the engine and radiator complete with tubes and wiring are still inside the hull of a submerged tank.

Weirdest of all you find a pile of rubber thigh-length boots in almost mint condition. If you rub the algae off the sole you can see the tread pattern is brand new, and the writing reads "Made in Canada", a size 10 (It would probably fit me). Looking out from the bridge is like looking out from a submarine - you can watch schools of basslets and other divers passing by outside the portholes. Back at the bow a large moray eel has taken up residence in an exhaust vent near to the anchor winch, grinning malevolently at you as you pass by.

Altogether a pretty awe-inspiring dive, though I later found out the other dive team had some issues with their divemaster. Mohammad from DDU had apparently let one guy in his group run out of air - despire the fact he had even signed only 30 bar left. That sort of thing just shouldn't ever happen, and unsurprisingly the guy who ran out of air didn't feel like entering the wreck on the second dive; I wouldn't want to try an alternate air source ascent from inside a wreck at 30m either! Ah well, on to Ras Mohammad...
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Dahab, Egypt

The bus from Cairo was amazingly new and clean, and also incredibly loud. Setting off at 12:30am following a slightly stressful trek to the bus station we were treated to almost nonstop Arabic soap operas (featuring lumpy-faced and slightly overweight patriarchs shouting dramatic things at their heavily-made-up daughters) and ludicrous domestic spy/action movies. Any brief pauses in the entertainment were comfortably filled with blaring Egyptian pop music. We had to stop a couple of times so some guy could come check our passports in the middle of the desert for no particular reason, but apart from that we arrived in Dahab after a fairly uneventful journey.

We wandered up and down the beachfront, finally settling on Seven Heaven based mostly on the fact the air con dorm cost LE20 a night, plus the lukewarm recommendation of an American girl we met in Cairo. Straight away Dave and I signed up for our respective dive courses, since the attached dive centre (Divers Down Under) seemed to be one of the cheapest around. My instructor was a (generally) chilled out English/Israeli guy called Avi, who turned out to be a great teacher, but was pretty jaded with the management of the dive centre itself (he was not the only one).

The advanced course took five dives spread out over a week. The highlight for me was diving the Canyon, about 20min drive north of Assalah where the hostel was. Here volcanic activity had formed a steep-sided crack in the sloping bottom lined with soft and hard corals. Avi and I dropped to about 30m and took our fins off - pushing off from the sandy bottom meant you could bounce up into the middle of the canyon, scattering schools of fish to either side, and the royal blue water beyond was sharply outlined by the edges of the reef on either side. Ascending through the narrow crack in the rock you exit via 'the fishbowl' - a cave containing a resident shoal of glassfish circling like a whirlwind. Rolling onto your back and looking upwards through the cracks in the roof you can see the spiky outlines of about 20 lionfish with the sunlight filtering through the translucent skin between their spines. We also did a night dive at the Lighthouse, right near to the hostel. I spotted cuttlefish and squid rossing the narrow beam of the dive torch, and black and yellow moray eels were winding through the reef. When you turn off the light you can see the flashes of phosphorescence from plankton like blue sparks coming off the blades of your fins.

Dahab itself isn't really anything that special - prices are about on a par with Cairo, and most of the restaurants are touristy places along the beachfront with hustlers in the street trying to rope you in every time you walk past. Fortunately most of them have given up on us by now, though there are one or two extremely persistent ones near the bridge. The best way to spend the evening is to go to the Christian liquor store to buy Sakara beers, then find a restaurant that doesn't serve alcohol, get a seat and order a shisha and some bread and dips and drink your beers by the sea. There are one or two places that serve cheap local food in the side streets (though it's Ramadan now so they are usually closed during the day) plus a couple of restaurants that serve reasonably-priced seafood (most are a total rip-off).

Having finished our dive courses I'm going to do a trip to dive the Thistlegorm wreck and Ras Mohammad National Park, but after that there's not really that much left to do in Dahab - the dive centre probably won't let us borrow their snorkelling gear for free any more! Might have to head for Mt Sinai pretty soon...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/inter-yunnan/1186316940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/inter-yunnan/1186316940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/inter-yunnan/1186316940/tpod.html Sun, 05 Aug 2007 09:02:20 -0400 Asian Invasion

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Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

Let me just say, it is not possible to feel any lonelier than if you are wandering around an Indian railway station in the middle of the night, having just had all your stuff taken. The story of how this happened is pretty complicated, and it made for the weirdest night of my life, but essentially I found myself sat by the tracks at the station in Varanasi at 2am with just the clothes on my back, plus my daysack (which luckily had my camera in it) and my wallet (money, cards, passport and ticket all ok). Of course there was no way I had a guidebook anymore.

I thought back to reading the section on Varanasi in the Blue Bible I got second hand in Kathmandu. All I could recall was the vast array of scams that the rickshaw and taxi-wallahs will try to pull on you. I really didn't relish the thought of trying to find a guesthouse in the middle of the night, given the circumstances, but I had no choice.

I told the driver of the tuk-tuk just to take me to the 'main ghats', for which I payed an inflated Rs 50. From there, all I could do was wander around aimlessly, looking for guesthouses that might still be open. Varanasi is not a friendly place if you are lost at night. The alleyways are lined with crusty guys with huge beards snoring on doorsteps, and I was seriously considering follwing their example, since every doorway was shuttered with steel. There is not any significant streetlighting once you are in the gulleys (alleyways) around the ghats, and I found my sandals slipping in mounds of rubbish and cowshit. Indeed, I also had to squeeze my way between clusters of sleepy bovines to get down the alley, flicking me with their shit-covered tails. The poor people stay out at night, I see the whites of their eyes in the dark, but I can't make out any expressions, and no one speaks a word.

Eventually after hammering on 4 shutters a rickshaw driver helped me to find a place to stay. I made it very clear that I had my things stolen, and couldn't afford an expensive place. The room cost Rs150 and was pretty grotty, but I had stayed in far worse, and it had a shower and bathroom (but I have no towel, soap, toothbrush or toilet paper). By then it was past 4am, and I collapsed on the dirty mattress and slept.

As you could imagine, it was not a good night's sleep. The air is still heavy and oppressive at night, and my thoughts were pretty dark too. I have been reading a novel by Haruki Murakami, and I began to feel like I was getting sucked into the same dream-like state as the main protagonist. After a while I decided to walk to the train station to get a police report.

By now the air was seriously hot, and my shirt has been soaked in sweat many times over since it was last cleaned. I spent almost the whole of today faffing around writing the police report. The GRP police were friendly and well-meaning, but had pretty limited English, and also some strong opinions over what the report should say. They clearly didn't understand when I tried to write my version of events (I have to be honest, I don't recall many of the details of what happened myself). In the end I hammered out a compromise with the help of an art student from Hyderabad who happened to be there, and a Tourist Police officer. I then had to wait for the bureaucratic gears to grind round while the report was officially lodged.

After getting lost on the way back to the ghats I finally checked into what I remembered was the cheapest of the budget options in the Lonely Planet, the Yogi Lodge. It's not bad for Rs55 a night for dorm, plus it has internet. Writing about what happened definitely helps to calm your mind and sharpen your thoughts on what to do next. I have not eaten at all today, and I only had some samosas on the train yesterday. I think what I need most of all now is food.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/inter-yunnan/1185676200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/inter-yunnan/1185676200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ali_m/inter-yunnan/1185676200/tpod.html Wed, 01 Aug 2007 06:00:53 -0400 Asian Invasion

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Jomsom, Nepal

I'm very conscious that this blog is now so out of date there's no way I'm going to be able to catch up while I'm still travelling. I'll update properly when I have time and free internet, but for now I will give just the basic facts. Trekked for 5 days to get to Jomsom. Weather was rainy and cloudy, so no mountain views, but the Kali Gandaki valley was beautiful - lush green terraced paddy fields with a roaring river beneath. The trail was pretty easy to follow, and guides and porters were obviously unnecessary, even though almost all the other westerners we saw seemed to have an entourage. There were some tough climbs over slippery stone 'steps', and in many places the paths were essentially rocky streams. By the time I reached Jomsom I was very sick with giardia (I'll spare the details), so I was stuck in a hotel bed watching Star Movies for several days.

Meanwhile the 'daily' flights from Jomsom to Pokhara were totally grounded, so Dave and I were both stranded there. Once the antibiotics started to take effect and I was feeling a bit better we headed back with Englishman Oli, his Nepali wife, his local business associate Mike and Mike's girlfriend (?). Taking a combination of dodgy 4x4s, minibuses and footpower we made it to the 'proper' road at Beni, where we were promptly totally ripped off on the bus back (the Nepali passengers we were going to split the cost with decided they didn't actually want to pay after all, so the tourists were lumped with the full bill). All good fun.
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Pokhara, Nepal

We were definitely in Pokhara at the wron time of year. The lake is supposed to be mirror smooth and reflect the mighty peaks of the Himalayas. At the moment it just reflects a load of clouds. The best part of Pokhara was getting beers and free snacks and watching free movies at Teatime Bamboostan before setting out early for trekking the next day.
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