31 December 2008
Last day of the year; and what a year it has been!
We had breakfast at the hotel as TH is feeling a little better than yesterday. We headed into Thamel and picked up our bus tickets for the upcoming trip to the Royal Chitwan National Park, then wandered throught Thamel watching the activities there.
We spent the afternoon sitting in the sun in the hotel gardens, chatting with Kirsty who has also checked in here (the Kathmandu Guest House was just too noisy and the local touts camped just outside the hotel gates too agressive.) We are catching up with the remnants of the trekking group at 19:00 for NYE dinner, so as the sun went behind the close-by buildings and shade drew across the garden, we adjourned to the room for a quick siesta and made preparations to go out.
Whilst in the room we received a telephone call from the travel agent who informed us he couldn’t get the visas for Tibet until 06 Jan at the earliest, so we have changed the trip and will depart Kathmandu on 08 Jan, driving overland to Lhasa and flying back to Kathmandu.
We met up with Kirsty and Emily at the Kathmandu Guest House. The streets were very busy; there were a few tourists out and about, but by far the majority of the crowds were locals; it seemed like everyone at the north end of Thamel was heading south and those at the southern end heading north. The central junction was just a complete fiasco of people, rickshaws, taxis, cars and motorcycles with no-one in control. We headed to La Dolce Vita (which conveniently is directly across the road from KGH but it still took ten minutes to get there!) for an Italian meal and treated ourselves to a few bottles of imported Chianti. The food was pretty good, the first bottle of wine was OK but the second tasted better. From the restaurant first-floor windows we had a birds eye view of the streets packed with revellers still trying to swap ends of Thamel. After dessert we decided to brave the streets for our return to the hotel (it was nearly 22:00, a very late night for us). It was manic. Everywhere was in complete gridlock and no matter how many times the local traffic volunteer blew his tiny whistle, the gridlock just stayed, well, gridlocked. Once we were out of the main part of Greater Thamel things were a little less chaotic, so we could wander back to the hotel in relative peace and quiet. When we got back to the hotel there were still a few souls up and about, but the power was off so things were mostly quiet.
We retired for our final sleep in 2008, looking forward to the prospects of 2009.
Happy New Year.