Monday night I booked the flight for Kathmandu scheduled to leave Tuesday at about 4pm then went to sleep. I thought the jet lag would be gone by now, but between the jet lag and a nagging cough I didn’t get much sleep.
When we got to the airport in Delhi I thought we’d have plenty of time with free wifi to book our hotel. In the worst situation – we’d get to Kathmandu and find a hotel while at the airport. However we needed Annie’s phone (we were only able to unlock Annie’s phone, so mine is only good for wife and non-telephone uses here) to receive a text code to get the free wifi, but the phone ran out of minutes and I don’t know how to reload it (I’ll look into that soon). After we checked in at the airport and found the gate we had about 20 minutes before boarding so I was speeding to get on the internet. I made it, booked a room, and then we had to get on the plane before I could receive the confirmation.
When we arrived in Kathmandu, we changed a few hundred dollars, got a cab to the hotel (what a wild, crazy ride), and checked in. They told us breakfast wasn’t included (but it’s just another $5 each)… Looking closer, we realized I booked the room for Wednesday and Thursday nights, not for tonight… and I booked it for one person, not two. They said they’d be flexible and work it out. I got a good deal on this hotel, $30/night when it’s advertised for $65 (but my price was for one occupant, not two). A hotel down the road said they’d charge us $15/night which includes breakfast for the two of us. We’ll stay here these three nights (we don’t know how they’ll adjust the price yet) then look for our next destination.
While walking the streets (imagine China town in New York… but these shops and streets seem to go on forever. It seems like a maze we can easily get lost in. Annie’s in heaven – She’s about to have a retail therapy attack.
There’s a spa next door with every treatment you can imagine. Annie thinks we should go as a couple… I think I’d be happier working on the videos or the blog (I really want to edit some of the videos from the Gypsy school in the slums as well as the video of the drive here and post it so we can share some more of the magic of this trip).
One nice connection, we found a local orphanage that’s looking for volunteers to help with the kids – teaching English, dance, arts…. this might make a sweet day why we’re here. i didn’t bring along my costume but have enough balloons to do some shows or just to play for a while.
On another note, I bought two new toys for this trip (both used on eBay). One is a small 2 pound Macbook Air (Annie thought I should definitely have one for the trip and Ozzie helped change my stubborn opinion of us bringing along my old, more bulky 5-pound macbook pro that I hold together with duct tape). The second is a video camera that uses memory disks instead of video tapes. Another feature of this camera is that it can project the videos. This evening Annie and I watched some of the video playbacks of us driving through the streets of Kathmandu… we watch the videos on the ceiling of our hotel room.
More later – hopefully with some videos and photos.
footnote. We just woke up (at least I did) – the first night we actually slept a full 8 hrs or so. This is good.