The flight into Kathmandu provided decent views of the mountains but there was a good bit of haze/pollution so it was difficult to appreciate much besides the company of your fellow trekkers. About half the flight looked like me with backpacks, hiking boots, and eager grins on their face, the other half were Nepali nationals I'm assuming and all made me look like the jolly green giant. Upon landing we were then mobbed by taxi drivers trying to take you to "their" guesthouse, and of course each is accompanied with a representative from the trekking agency associated with the guest house. There are 600+ trekking agencies here in Thamel (tourist district of Kathmandu) and they are all fighting for your business so I got the whole 9 yards from Encounter Trekking. Of course they assured me that the agencies I had been speaking with support terrorism and are members of the Maoist communist group. With 600 other companies I guess you gotta think of something to bring in customers, right?
Kathmandu itself is nuts. Streets about about 7 feet wide and filled wall-to-wall with cars but mostly motorbikes and rickshaws. The guest house I'm staying in is ridiculously nice, much better than I was expecting. All of the guesthouses remind me of townhouses from Baltimore. Very skinny with only a few rooms per floor but they go up rather high. I've seen a few yaks and tons of stray dogs rooming the streets, even got to see a few political rallies for the upcoming elections. All the locals are very excited and all of them seemed extremely relieved to be restoring democracy to the country, a welcoming thought.
The streets are lined with prayer flags, religious monuments and all sorts of colorful things to look at. There are shops and equipment stalls all over which are amazingly cheap, down sleeping bags for $40, jackets for $5-40. You could probably arrive here naked and be ready to climb Everest the next day. The most notable thing in Thamel thus far, aside from the ridiculously narrow streets and insane drivers (is it really necessary to honk ever 2 seconds?), has been the pollution. I was actually expecting it to be worse, but the air is a bit heavier than I'm used to, c'est la vie, I've got an awesome bandana to breathe through. But I'll be out of the city on Friday as I have an early morning flight to Lukla to start my 19 day Everest Base Camp trek. I've found a trekking companion...I think...a single South African male who seems like a good guy. We'll split the cost of a guide and go from there.
Until then I'll be hoping around the Katmandu valley to check out all of the local "tourist" hotspots tomorrow in between gearing up for my upcoming trek. All is going amazingly well so far and I can't wait to get into the mountains.
Streets of Thamel
Rickshaw in Kathmandu
