October 10, 2012

We had breakfast (banana pancakes) at 8 and met Amber & Sangye at 9.  We needed to finish up with some paperwork - passport copies & photos for our climbing permits, flight & insurance info, along with final payment.  

This is Liba's eighth trekking/climbing trip to Nepal so she was happy to take us out on a short walking tour.  It's all new to me so I just pretty much followed along with my mouth open.  We are in Thamel, the tourist section of Kathmandu.  It is very busy with little shops, restaurants, tourists, vendors, cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, bikes, dogs, etc. all on very narrow streets.  Many of the shops sell trekking equipment; most of it brand-name knockoffs.  It seems that North Face stuff is the most prevalent; otherwise known as North Fake.  The cars are tiny but are driven very skillfully down to the inch; there is no hesitation on the parts of the drivers.  There are no sidewalks.  The street vendors who sell trinkets are very insistent.  I understand that they are just trying to make a living, but they really irritate me.  Telephone and power wires are jumbled overhead.  All the shops are open-air, small and generally stuffed to overflowing.  We saw one liquor store that would have more properly been called a closet but it seemed to be well stocked.  The only stores we saw with doors and windows were a series of real brand-name gear shops all in a row.  People, people, everywhere!

We went to a place called Hot Bread (upstairs) for lunch - banana lassi, Indian soup, garlic naan.  It was pretty tasty.  Oh - and a chocolate croissant for dessert.  Then we were off to an up-scale coffee shop to meet the Czechs.  Liba is a Czech-Canadian so she has invited 4 Czechs to join us.  We will be a group of 10 - Liba, 3 other Canadians (me, Paule & Dennis), 2 New Zealanders (Helen & Steve) plus the 4 Czechs.  Liba is in the unique positions of speaking both English and Czech fluently.  The rest of us depend on her interpretation skills.  The Czechs kindly provided us all (including the guides) with expedition t-shirts.  Nice touch!  

Then back to the hotel to sort luggage.  Almost everyone had brought clothing to leave with the guides and also some extra clothes for the porters.  Our luggage allowed on the flight from Kathmandu to Lukla is just 15kg each, so it's a bit of a challenge to get down to that.  

Out for dinner, off to bed and up at 5am tomorrow.  The power situation is bit interesting in the hotel.  It comes and goes, and if one outlet stops working you just try another and chances are it will work.