5 January 2009
A late start and as SB feels much better we had a l.eisurely breakfast. We did up our budget and checked funds – not good news, we are way over, so will need to cut back on late nights drinking cocktails.
We dropped off our laundry an mpressive 5.5 kgs which will be ready tomorrow, amazing considering there is no electricity for 12 hours a day (soon to be up to 16 hours a day). We caught up with Suresh and due to not getting a seat on the flight back from Lhasa, we are now overlanding back to Kathmandu – this is becoming an epic voyage. he has booked our flight to the Indian border and we will then get a local bus/taxi to Darjeeling due to the high costs of a private car and our rapidly diminishing budget.
We had coffee in one of the rooftop cafes in Thamel, where SB got computer envy as it felt like we were the only ones within an EEPC. We then headed to the internet cafe to take a copy of all our photos due to the ongoing issues with the Olympus memory cards.
I had a wander around soaking up the noise and pandemonium of too much traffic and not wide enough streets.
We had a late dahl bhat lunch at Nameste Garden. I have been testing out my down jacket today as both my fleeces are in the wash and it is incredibly warm, hope it handles Tibet. We headed back to the hotel where I had some time to read “himalaya” by Michael Palin who has doen a similar trek to us and it is interesting and funny to read his notes on the journey to Lhasa – he encounters freezing temperatures and the worst toilets in history although the LP also comments on how bad toilets are in Tibet, they must be awful considering how bad Nepalese ones are.
We had a lovely hot shower after SB fixed the sproadic showerhead. We had dinner at the hotel due to the freezing temperatures and our laziness to go outside.