01 January 2009
Welcome to the new year!
We had a lie in and eventually made it to breakfast after 09:00, the hotel dining room was very busy due to an influx of tourists and a few having a late night.
We walked to Kantipath to time how long it will take to get from the hotel to the bus stop the next morning for the trip to Royal Chitwan National Park. On the return trip we detoured to the travel agency where we were told we should get our visas for Tibet by 06 Jan, so our trip departing Kathmandu on 08 Jan and returning by air on 17 Jan is still on; although we will have to get our visas extended whilst in Tibet because although they haven’t been issued yet, our original plan was to only be there until 14 Jan and it is far too hard to get changes made between the travel agent and the Chinese embassy. The travel agent also helped with our post-Tibet plans to get from Kathmandu to Darjeeling – we can fly to the Eastern end of Nepal then his brother can drive us across the border as we need to get to Darjeeling in one day from Kathmandu.
We did a bit of shopping and had a very ordinary coffee at the Pumpernickel Bakery, which for some reason unknown to us, is heavily frequented by tourists (maybe like us, they all thought the coffee there was good – why would everyone go there otherwise?) On the way back to the hotel we bought another metal water flask (useful as a hot water bottle, also these don’t tend to freeze in the cold as quickly as the camel packs we also have, and Tibet is going to be freezing; -10C to -30C there now according to local reports when the January average is a positively balmy -2C). We wandered slowly through Thamel back to the hotel for another lunch in the garden with Kirsty and took the opportunity for our favourite afternoon siesta.
We started packing for the bus trip tomorrow and put what we weren’t taking with us into the hotel store room, and settled our bill before heading back into Thamel for last dinner with Kirsty and Emily. At Tom and Jerry’s Bar we had a few cocktails and plundered their free popcorn (if you don’t want us to eat our body weight in popcorn then don’t give it away for free!) then made our way through the very-quiet-compared-to-last-night-streets to Yin Yang Thai Restaurant for a really nice meal. The restaurant was very busy which is in complete contrast to the streets and everywhere else we have seen tonight. We said our goodbyes to Emily (continuing on to India a couple of days) and Kirsty (heading home to NSW in two days) and went back to the hotel to complete preparations to leave for Chitwan the next morning.