Ready for the next stage

So my ankle is improving fairly well. It still hurts quite a bit, but I think what was more troublesome were my moods, but let's change that. This last week I have been my own worst enemy, so let's hope that I can get on the improve. No, let's not hope. I just will.

We went to Pokhara for a couple of days. It would have been great to stay there longer, or to continue on to other similar towns. We got to see the Himalayas on the flight over. That was a bit surreal of an experience, you're looking at the clouds, looking at the clouds, up pop some mountains. Righto...

Pokhara is a very nice place and apparently in good weather you can see the mountains from where we were staying. We stayed in a really nice place, although it was up on the fifth floor which was a little bit of a struggle, but most of the population of the places we have been have a much bigger struggle every day.

This is a picture looking town at the township of Pokhara, from the World Peace Stupa. We took a boat ride and then walked up to the temple. It was great there, the main part of the "peace" was the lack of people there, and the beautiful walk to get to the top.

On the way down, we took the other side of the mountain, which was a lot longer. We encountered some kids coming home from school and I think there was a bit of fun on each side, talking to each other and they would, particularly one girl, dance on the road behind us. After a while we came to a stream which crossed the road, and all the kids ran and took a jump over the stream, and this is something that I always like to do and doesn't give me any concerns, and even the dear wife was over on the other side of the stream, however, I was not planning on a second busted ankle, so I took another way, hopping over some stones a little way upstream.

We stopped in at a Tibetan refugee village on the way back down and that previously mentioned dear wife bought a bunch of gifts. We also stopped in at a waterfall. The movement of water is a very interesting process, not just in waves, but downstream in a river. Water can harness a lot of power. The falls were not particularly spectacular, but had a torrent of water flowing over them. On different maps there seems to be conjecture over whether the falls are Devi's Falls or Davis Falls. Who knows really?

Pokhara is the start for many treks, but all we could do was just a bit of short walking. The road back into town was more like those suburbs in the, I guess you would call it, mid west of Sydney eg Yagoona, just not really interesting at all, especially in comparison to the mountains and the lake and everything else.

There was a lot of cloud cover this morning, the World Peace Stupa was a long way out of view, and this meant the mountains were out of view of the pilots, so we had a bit of delay at the airport. The key issue with the airport was that we didn't withdraw any money before arriving, so we were out of cash, and stuck. On arrival at the Kathmandu airport I was far from surprised that the ATM there showed a display "out of service".

Tonight we are actually staying in our first Hostelling International hostel, well we did stay in the Gold Coast YHA, but is that section really part of the trip? The Kathmandu Youth Hostel is nice enough, but like all overseas HI's I have stayed in, just has this really boring vibe.

We got to catch up with our friends Suvecha and Manos again which was very nice, and we had a very nice lunch just down the road. After paying the bill, I realised they had only charged us for one beer instead of two. I was in no hurry to make them fix this one up, maybe things are turning my way.....

Tomorrow we have a fairly early start, and then almost the whole day will be spent in transit, but by the end of the journey we will be saying Sawatdee Kraup to Bangkok.

Not my day, not my week

So, as I may have mentioned already, I haven't been having the greatest time in our Nepalese adventure which really hasn't turned out as planned.

Today the rain was pouring down and my ankle was hurting a bit, so I didn't want to walk around too much, I chose to stay at home and have a bit of a rest.

At about lunch time I headed to the ATM to get some cash out for some lunch. It told me Issuer could not be contacted. I don't really know what that meant, but it meant no money came out. Whatever I thought, I'll go to a different ATM. I did just that around the corner, for it to tell me insufficient funds. I don't know about that I thought, so I went to check my account. The mongrels had charged me as if I had taken out this money, not an insignificant amount either (it takes a fee of about $5 for each withdrawal).

So, luck has not really been on my side. In the end I didn't have any lunch and nearly slipped over on my way back from the ATM. Seriously, this leg in Nepal is not going well at all.

I did receive some good news though. Since that festival Soundwave Revolution was cancelled, Machine Head will tour South America instead, with Sepultura. This means I will be seeing Machine Head in Santiago on October 23rd. That's something I'm really looking forward to.

Zines in Nepal

Not so sure if I will be able to make it out to this location, but good to see there is some zine scene here in Nepal.

I found this website

http://www.raikoris.webs.com/

Rai Ko Ris herstory/history:

Current:

Run an Infoshop since Dec. 2004 + now with a radical bookstore + publishing since Jan. 2010.

This may be one of the rare spots in Kathmandu holding feminist/queer/gay alternative literature + magazines, books + pamphlets on anarchism, d.i.y sustainable living, + socio-politico music magazines. Also available - our own zine Self Defense + the first translation of a text on anarchism from English to Nepali 'Anarchism ke ho?' (Originally from What is Anarchism compiled by Donald Rooum).

The Infoshop is located in a small village half an hour to 40 mins by public transport outside the city centre, north at the end of Kathmandu Valley in a place called Budhanilkanta (famous for the large reclining Vishnu statue + temple), + beside Shivapuri National Park. Thanks to the Ricecooker team in Malaysia, Irregular Rhythm Assylum in Japan, Francis of Love from Hate...the Philippines, Friesen Collective (Bremen, Germany), 1000 Fryd (Alborg, Denmark), Eef, Fort Van Sjakoo + ADM squat (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and the band Cutter (Barcelona, Spain) + all those who know for all their support.

We try to open it in accordance with the arbitrary electricity schedule, our life + kids. Please contact us at raikoris@wlink.com.np for latest schedule.

S.Rai + O.Bertin also have also had alter egos in the bands Tank Girl, Reggae/Ska-punk outfit Naya

Nepal Transport Strike

So, in convenient news, buses and taxis are off the road, indefinitely. Apparently old mates in the union have a list of about 42 demands that they want met before returning to the road.

You know, normally I wouldn't care, but on day one in Kathmandu I fell down some stairs and busted up my ankle so I can barely walk. Today was not much of a day really. It took a lot of walking and hobbling to get to the bus station we wanted to go to, only to find it empty of buses. We had been told earlier in the morning of a taxi strike but nobody said anything about the buses....

The only thing of note that we did this evening was to go to a pub where a cover band played. They did play All Apologies by Nirvana....

I saw some more metal-shirt clad characters today, but it wasn't really a situation where I could go HEY MATE COOL SHIRT, but you know, I think that's the most noticable difference between India and Nepal, I know there are plenty of others that everybody can see straight away, but this is just a personal thing. In India, I didn't see a band shirt anywhere, just these pseudo hippies wearing their wrong sized Indian style apparel. In Nepal, music is around. You know, we were in the supermarket, Green Day was playing on the radio, I sensed there was something different here.

We have been staying in a pretty crappy hostel, but here we are, still here on these hard pillows and not-that-clean sheets. Our flight is not til next week, but you know, honestly, I could go home now....

Trust?

Trussssssssst in me, trusssssssssssst in me...

This morning we asked at our hostel for some opinions about prices of getting around to a few places to have a look at. Nepal has a number of World Heritage sites, 3 of which we visited today. We were told a price, and our man said, if you trust me I will give you a good price.

We went down on to the street and found our own taxi for half the price on offer. Trust is a hard thing in travel, especially it seems in places like India and Nepal, and I'm sure we will find similar in the next countries we visit. Rather than being happy to chat to a stranger, it's a wariness, not even of strangers, but even the people who are meant to be there to help you out.

I'll keep all the many readers guessing on which places we went to, and add more to that tomorrow.