Himalayan Odyssey (3)

Last night's sleep was broken due to street noise continuing throughout the night. It seems that even when there is little other traffic on the street the drivers have to periodically lean on the horn to reassure themselves that they are still alive and awake! Of course this is pretty much like Bangalore was too. Of course it makes no difference that much of Thamel is a restricted area for vehicular traffic and there are signs at the entrances proclaiming it as a 'Horn Free' zone (no jokes please!).

Breakfasted at Brezels Bakery after an easy morning stroll through Thamel's alleyways. It's easy to understand the attraction for tourists with all of the competing shops with souvenir and other goods ranging from pure kitch to the utterly desirable.

Meena from the Sherpa Society came to the hotel at 10:30 to brief us and set us up to depart for Lukla tomorrow at 6:30AM - meaning a very early start from the Hotel - oh goodie ;-(. We also met our main guide - Ang Nuru who is a nice young Sherpa guy (24) but with good experience. He will fly with us tomorrow to help sort out the fun getting onto the flight etc. While we were doing all of this meeting and greeting etc along with tea drinking, the restaurant guy got chatting to us also. He asked where we come from and what kind of animals we have. We described a Kangaroo and I hopped across the Restaurant to show him how it moves - to howls of laughter of course!

Later we wen out walking but on arrival back at the hotel there were some notes pinned to Barry and Shirley's door for us and them to call home urgently. Dominic and I just went down the street to where I could make an ISD call (100/= Rs per minute at this one) and I spoke to Garth. It turned out that Barry's brother had died so that had immediately followed up through all of the contact information which we had left. Even though we weren't in the hotel we had planned to stay in the system worked well.

Barry got through to his son Matthew without any problem but could not get through to his parents in Brisbane at all. Not good news but not a lot Barry could do from here apart from support Matthew through the period.

Before leaving Australia I had decided to hire a down jacket for the possibly cold evenings while on the trek. Having been told that there were dozens of places to hire gear I couldn't find one of them so ended up buying one (with North Face label) for US$47. Later, of course, I found an outdoor gear hire shop - ho hum!

Being our second and last evening in Kathmandu before the trek we wanted a nice meal so we ended up seven floors up on the rooftop at Helena's where had a really nice curry dinner for about US$7 each. There were great views as the sun was setting, including some tantalising glimpses of snow-capped peaks to the East (Everest direction).

On arriving back at the hotel we had the good news that our flight to Lukla has been rescheduled to 8.00AM so we don't have to leave the hotel until 6:45AM - much better ;-)