Flights took a bit longer due to a delay in our connection at Abu Dhabi but 24 hours after leaving chilly damp Felpham we arrived, with 13 other volunteers, in warm dusty Kathmandu yesterday and are now ensconced in the Pacific Guest House.
The Pacific Guest House, Lainchar, Kathmandu
Unfortunately I was sitting on the wrong side of the plane (when you come and visit us, try to get a left hand window seat) for a decent view of the Himalayas. The glimpse I got of them as we turned to land was not clear enough to get a picture; be patient and I will eventually post one of Everest. Although it was National Democracy Day, which perhaps would have been reason for more demonstrations, there was no obvious sign of the local difficulties at the airport or on the roads in to the city.
Nice room and a pleasant surprise to find an en-suite bathroom although the pleasure of this was slightly spoilt when we found there was no hot water (apparently there is in some of the rooms, some of the time, so look out for news in future postings). We ventured into Thamel, the tourist area, yesterday evening – crossing the road is interesting and noisy – and Sheila was happy to see the number of ethnic textile/clothing shops. We now need to find shops where she can buy these at local as opposed to tourist prices! The temperature dropped from about 20'C during the day to 10' overnight, not as cold as we had expected or it had been a week or to back. Hopefully the thermal long johns I packed may not be needed until December (check out the Kathmandu weather link to the right).
Today has been a free day to allow us to unpack and explore a bit which we did. Deeper into Thamel and then Lazimpat which is the start of the diplomatic and posh hotel area. Found a supermarket that, although not quite in the same league as Tescos, had tinned fish and Aussie wine, that's one major concern dealt with. I also managed to buy a local SIM card for my mobile which once activated in 24 hrs (that's South Asia time though) should mean we can get texts. We start our In-Country Training tomorrow with a visit to the VSO office followed by further briefings (security, health etc) on Wednesday and Thursday before we start language training (scary!) on Friday.
Enough for today, I have to go to our local internet shop and attempt to post this via a very slow dial-up connection. I am typing this on my laptop and hope to be able to take a copy up to the shop and transfer it once I am logged in. If you are reading this I have been successful, if not I am talking to myself (Ed: I think it worked!). Before we left a couple of people asked whether they can reply to these posts. Yes you can, if you are registered with www.blogger.com you can post a comment (it can be seen by everyone so keep it clean) or alternatively send an e-mail to the same addresses we had in the UK.
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