O frabjous day!

Callooh! Callay! We got our visas yesterday! It only took 3 hours and a small monetary incentive (suggested by them, not us) but we now have valid visas until 22 November. We will, of course, have to extend them cos we won't be finished our Island Peak expedition until 26 November and fly home on 30 November but but but we are now legal!

Ms Libra and Bluey arrived on Thursday. Smithy and I went out to the airport with our guide Kuman to meet them. We were there for a very long time and met all sorts of other people we knew, as well as a famous Tibetan Buddhist nun, Ani Choeling Drolma, who is a fantastic singer - I have one of her CDs, and bought her latest just the other day - before Ms Libra and Bluey finally made their appearance - their luggage was virtually the last to be unloaded...

So, we've had a busy few days sightseeing. We all went off to Boudhnath Stupa on Saturday and were just in time to see the stupa being re-decorated with new flags and bunting and new lotus leaf patterns in saffron being reapplied to the stupa itself. After a fascinating hour or so visiting monasteries and watching the locals we headed out to Kopan monastery and nunnery. The monastery was a hive of activity. It seems to be a popular place for Nepalis to visit. Being that it was Brothers and Sisters day of Dashain, alot of people would have been visiting their monk brothers. In contrast, the nunnery was absolutely deserted and someone had to go looking for the keys to open the assembly hall for us. As it was getting on in afternoon, we headed back down the road to Boudhnath, or so we thought. Managed to get ourselves well and truly lost in the winding streets of some villages. Could not see Boudhnath Stupa anywhere (and it's a bloody great big structure) so could not get our bearings. After passing the same intersection for the second time, we threw in the towel and negotiated with a taxi driver to take us back to Thamel for 250 RPs (approx $5.00) who then promptly got lost himself! Finally arrived back at our hotel well satisfied with the day's adventures.

We all head off for our Annapurna Circuit on 11 October, so this is the last post for a few weeks. Happy trails!

Pokhara Pleasures

So we are back in Kathmandu after 5 days in Pokhara. We originally planned the Pokhara trip with the intention of visiting the children we sponsor through World Vision. Even extended the trip by a day to facilitate such visit as our sojourn included a weekend and the WV office would be shut. However, two days before we flew out of Australia we got a phonecall from WV's Melbourne office saying the visit couldn't go ahead cos the national holiday Dasain was going to be on 28 Sept - 8 Oct and everything would be closed. Could we change the dates of our visit? Well, no we could not. We could though stay an extra day in Pokhara at the end of our Annapurna trek and visit the children then. Done, sorted but it still left us with 5 days in Pokhara. Ke garne ke garne as they say in Nepalese - what to do what to do?

Well, there's Fewa Lake and we spent a lovely hour being rowed around it, watching the clumps of hyacinth floating past and the boatloads of people travelling to and from the little temple on the little island in the middle of the lake for festival blessings. As I mentioned, Dasain is a 10-day festival, and it was good fun being amongst everyone as they all dressed up in their finest (especially the women), visited each other and sported huge tikas on their foreheads and bunches of rice stalks behind their ears. Lots of swings and big clunky wooden ferris wheels are erected at Dasain and we discovered that it is really good luck to leave the ground for even a few seconds during Dasain. Well, we managed to dispense with the need for a swing altogether as at one point during the arduous bus journey to Pokhara (see last post) we hit a pothole that sent us completely airborne from our seats! There's only one part of Dasain that is a little hard to take and that is the wholesale sacrifice of goats. The family next door to our hotel had a cute little black goat tied up in the garden for all of Saturday and Sunday. Then late Sunday afternoon it was led inside and we never heard from it again.....

We went walking a couple of days - first to Devi's Falls - a waterfall that falls 100m into a hole in the ground. Quite amazing. It was an extremely hot day but we had a nice time walking through rice fields on our way there. We then called into a Tibetan refugee village and chatted with one lovely lady for a bit before heading off to find the refugee village we were really looking for. When a taxi driver confessed he didn't know where it was but would charge us 300 rupees to take us there, we gave the whole exercise up for the day.

One of the things we did want to do in Pokhara was go for an ultra-light flight over the mountains a la Michael Palin. But, except for dawn of our very first day there, clouds covered the mountains every day and we weren't (or rather Smithy wasn't, since this was going to be an early birthday present to me) going to fork out US$200 each for a bird's eye view of the lake and not much else. We also didn't get up to the Peace Stupa, which sat up on a ridge tantalizing us with its gleaming white dome. The hot hot weather made the slog up the hill most unattractive, with the same lack of mountain views that would have made such an effort really worthwhile. Instead, we went for another row on the lake - much more relaxing! We also poked around alot of shops, bought quite a few gifts - and no, we're not telling you what we bought! - drank lots of lassis and lemon sodas, got rained on everytime we went out for dinner and generally did a lot of nothing at all! Just as planned as a reward for Tibet and early reward for Annapurna Circuit.

We're off to the airport now after a fruitless wait at the Dept of Immigration - got there at 9.30 to find it opened at 10am. Then at 10.10 a lovely Pom came along and told us it wouldn't open til 11am cos of the holidays, so we are still visaless! Anyway, Ms Libra and Bluey should be arriving in the next hour and we're really excited about seeing them. We love our own company, and enjoy striking up conversations with complete strangers, but it's going to be a real buzz having them here.

Oh, and we scored an invitation to an art show whilst waiting for the visa office to open, so it wasn't a complete waste of time!