I had an excellent birthday in Kathmandu. It started at 5am for the drive from Pohkara and finished near midnight in Tom and Jerry’s bar in Thamel. Cold beer, steak fajitas and classic rock on the stereo…excellent. All together now : “It’s the final countdown…..”. Name that band music fans.

The blurry eyes in the pics (which I will post asap) are down to the tiredness, not the booze. Ahem.

Got up this morning (the day after) and went off to find a parcel that had been sent from home. It took an hour in a taxi, a trip through the side streets (now I know where they make all the East-Face and Notrh-Face (correct spelling, I’ve also seen Adadias) copy clothing that is everywhere) and a strict security interview to get my hands on my packet. So the security process :

The post office has a pile of (not alphabetised) cards and letters and you have to search through it until you find your name. You give this to a fella, who takes a big ring of keys from his pocket. He opens a small green box, takes out a bigger ring of keys, locks the green box again. He then opens the big brown box and gets your parcel. You don’t get to hold it until he has reversed the process and locked away the special keys again. I’ve noticed that since we left Europe being the person who has the key, blows the whistle or holds the long stick means you have great power and responsibility. Everyone defers to the stick holding, whistle blowing key masters over here.

So what was in the parcel? Good wishes from home, cards and some books about Kathmandu. Oh, and a highly inaccurate England “Football’s Coming Home” t-shirt which brought back bad memories of a few nights ago. I can’t wear it in public because people will point and laugh. Football is not coming home ever. North Korea will win the world cup before England and I’ll be a size 0 waif model catwalking lingerie on Mars before either come true as well.

On the way back to the hostel, I went to the pukka North Face shop as they are the only place in town selling premium titanium tent pegs. I’ve wanted new ones since Romania so I wasn’t going to miss this chance. My pathetic Terra Nova pegs can jog on, TNF is the way forward. Before entering the shop I gave my wallet to Silver Chris (I’ll explain the nickname another time), a mate from the trip. I can neither afford or resist high quality technical clothing!

I then went for a late breakfast of cappuccino and banana pancakes. But don’t worry I’m not going all Jack Johnson, it’ll be red meat for tea tonight and a couple of Birthday-Boxing-Day beers.

Bye!