Breakfasted at a different restaurant today. We’re determine d to try as many of the delights of Kathmandu as we can manage in the time we are here. This one was a little disappointing, not because of the quality of the food, which was excellent, but because of the large number of flies who wanted to share it with us. Val went off to Immigration again afterwards. We had thought yesterday that we would apply for our special trekking permit – we’re starting off on a long-ish trek tomorrow, + they’re required by law – when we arrived in Pokhara, but R + A had told us last night that, as the Pokhara office is not so overworked + consequently has more time, they are correspondingly stricter about requiring one to have changed the necessary amount of money – about $5 a day each – at a proper bank, at the proper rate. So we had decided to chance the haphazard chaos of the Kathmandu office once again, the pain being that we could have done it all yesterday.
When she got back – no problems, apart from the fact that she’d forgotten to take the required 2 photos – we had coffee + cake, + then strolled about. It could be an easy mode of life to slide into. Kathmandu is by no means a dirty town, + today we noticed that it was even more thoroughly swept than usual. We wondered what it was all about, especially when soldiers + policemen began to appear + marshal the population into some sort of order. I ran back to get the camera, but had not needed haste – there was plenty of time before anything happened. And when it did, it ws over in a flash. An advance cavalcade of 2 motorcycles, followed by one chauffeur-driven car, + not going slowly at that. There were a few sporadic handclaps from the local people around me, + as they started to disperse I realised I had missed it – not even a snapshot. The King had just driven thro’ the city, something which happens frequently, we later discovered, + always the same elaborate preparations.
In the afternoon, Val went back to Immigration while I checked out the hire of sleeping bags etc. It is very easy to hire such things here – of good quality too. I didn’t make much actual progress, however, beyond selecting the shop to do business with – I needed an air-ticket to leave as deposit, + she had them both. She was very late getting back, having encountered, this time around, only too many problems, all stemming originally from those missing photos. Once she was back, we popped out quickly to collect the sleeping-bags, then went down to Freak St to eat. We chose the restaurant ourselves this time, + didn’t so nearly so well. We did even worse when we tried to find a cake shop to have some dessert, + ended up checking out most of the restaurants in the area, without success, + feeling more + more depressed. We went to Cosmopolitan’s, which had been recommended to us, but the pudding selection was dreary, so we just had coffee. We did have some company, when an Irish girl + English guy joined us. The Englishman was interesting – he’d just come overland on his own from England, + since Pakistan had run the gamut of disaster. Like so many others, he’d been robbed there, + was having a devil of a job getting his money back on his travellers’ cheques from Amex. But it was the Irish girl, unfortunately, who monopolised the conversation, + she was scatty but dull. So many times we long for company; so often, when it comes, we reject it.
Back out on the road, + in a shitty mood with the world + each other, I wanted to go visit R + A, until Val pointed out, entirely correctly, that the only reason I wanted to do so was to have a smoke. I didn’t feel any better about having this pointed out to me, but agreed with her. It was now we remembered the grass we’d been given, so we bought some papers + headed back to enjoy it. Val rolled a perfectly respectable joint – small but entirely adequate – particularly when, as we soon discovered, the grass was dynamite. Thus fortified, we headed down to Naryan’s, our nearest restaurant. The food there would have tasted wonderful to us whatever it was really like, but in fact it was really (I think) quite superb. We had an apple strudel, a cinnamon roll… + then took another cinnamon roll home. Being in our condition + out in public was also very spacey – was everyone looking at us, or were we imagining it?
Taking advantage of the various delights on offer, as well as, rather inefficiently, tackling some business. Surely we have had exactly the same problem with missing photos before. Which does make you think we might have learned our lesson. Not at all.
