Himalayan Odyssey(18)

Friday, 19th October, 2008
After a nice quiet night's sleep we only have time for a cup of coffee at 7am before Tulsi arrives at 7:30 to take us to the Shiva Temple. The walk up the hill is quite pleasant in the early morning. At the beginning of the Temple grounds there are two paths up to the Temple. One through a formal gateway and up flights of steps to the top of the hill and the other up a slightly less steep set of steps. We chose the less steep path ;-)

Gateway on path leading to Shiva Temple, Bhaktapur

Detail of carved wooden plaque in Temple gateway

Shiva Temple, Bhaktapur

After visiting the Temple its back to Tulsi's house where we meet his lovely wife and have another cup of coffee and then back to the guest house for breakfast.

Dominic and I head into Kathmandu by catching a local bus at the bottom of the hill for 50/= Rs. After getting off the bus in Kathmandu its a 2km walk to the Thai Air office - arriving at about 12 noon and they close for lunch at 1pm. The office is packed and they have a ticketing system so that they can deal with people in proper order. My ticket is 26 and they are currently serving number 7! However, we get to the counter just before the 1pm close only to find that there is no way to change my flights to get back to Aus and earlier. Dominic gets waitlisted for 31 October - hopefully to fly out with me but we will just have to wait and see.

After the 'excitement' of the airline office we walk into Thamel and, appropriately, have a Thai lunch at 'Yin Yang'. AFter a bit of shopping we pick up the rest of our belongings from the Yanki Hotel and taxi back to the guest house at Bhaktapur for 1500/= Rs. This tariff included the taxi-driver carrying the suitcase up the hill because his taxi couldn't make it.