Aaaaaand It Begins!!

Well.. It is safe to say that we have gotten in way over our heads (in a good way). We realized that our travel credentials are pretty weak: I have only traveled in Europe, and Hill has only been to the Bahamas and Mexico. Nepal is an entirely different world! There is so much going on, it’s dizzying. People everywhere, cows/goats/dogs in traffic, on the sidewalk, in your hotel garden… but it works. It is a pretty steep learning curve, but we’ve had a great time so far! Our first night was spent at a hotel frequented by climbers of the tallest peaks in Nepal, so it was a treat for me to see pictures signed by climbing legends all over the walls. However, our room was right above a bar that featured a local cover band that blared Dave Matthews, Bon Jovi, and Cold Play. We didn’t get much sleep that night. We switched over to a great little oasis of a spot a bit further out of the Thamel district. It was a great place to relax on the lawn after a day of running around town. Simply walking for an hour or two is an adventure in Kathmandu, since we don’t have a detailed map of the town. (Our only Nepal book is based around trekking, with only a 5page section on Kathmandu) There is absolutely no order in which the roads are laid out, and many of them are about 8feet wide and twist and wind their way into each other. Needless to say, we got lost plenty.. But we had a blast doing so. Fortunately, the local folks are so friendly that I never worried about having real issues if we wandered into the wrong part of town. We got lost in a district that seemed to specialize in goat butchers and dog poo, so we just hopped on the rickshaw we saw. Now the driver insisted he could take us, but he looked like he was born in the 1800s and he weighed less than my left leg. He was the little driver that could. He got us home, but it was not pretty.

We are now in Pokhara, Nepal, a lakeside town of 250,000 folks. Although Pokhara is only 200km west of Kathmandu, the “highway” is such narrow, twisting pig path that it took us 7 hours to get here on the bus. You ever crossed a creek in a bus? Us neither. Now I am not sure if the drivers in Nepal are the absolute worst or the most amazing drivers I could imagine..  On one hand, the traffic is absolute chaos, but on the other.. It’s wonderful how well all the vehicles and people intertwine into an insurance adjuster’s worst nightmare. After 30 hours of flights and airports, which presented us with very little stimulation, we get our 90day visas and walk out into the blazing sunlight and are bombarded by taxis drivers. Luckily, Hotel Garuda sent a driver for us.. This guy was Nepali Richard Petty. Within seconds of leaving the airport parking lot, we were in a jumble of cars, trucks, mopeds, motorcycles, bicycles, tractors, steamrollers, pedestrians, people in wheelchairs.. I desperately wanted to see a fella in rollerblades in the mix. I dared not put my arm out the window because it came clear that I wouldn’t get it back! We were inches from the trucks and tractors on either side of us, and if traffic coming the other direction got clogged up.. They just merged into oncoming traffic and swept right between cars in our lane. Our driver assured us that the conditions were due to rush hour, but that must last all day. Our ride to Pokhara was more of the same: We were passing other vehicles on hairpin turns with no guardrails without a hint of slowing down.. All on a two lane road.. No brakes,  Just a lot of honking. I forgot to mention that the drivers were performing these bus stunts while texting.. Sketchy.   There are no traffic signals here, so you just kinda walk across the street and trust that people will swerve around you. Our first crosswalk was a near death experience.. We got halfway across a 9 lane road (6one way, 3 the other way), only to be trapped on the centerline. I had to suck in my gut, so to not get hit. Luckily Hillary is a tiny person, so she only had to make sure her arm cast was not sticking out into traffic. Now when we cross streets, we just keep moving and don’t think too much about the thud of getting smacked by a truck.. They are pretty good at swerving.

We plan on hanging out in Pokhara for maybe a week, then set out trekking in the Annapurnas.