Kathmandu & Bhutan

I can't really post much about Kathmandu. I arrived in the mid afternoon after another interesting drive to Delhi airport (where I saw the first beggars of the trip... I expected to see many more in Delhi, but there were none where I was staying). Security at the airport is incredibly tight, but very efficient. It is interesting travelling in a place like this where the terror threat is very genuine and the chance of attack much higher than in a place like Toronto where the security is terrible, inefficient and seems to exist just to annoy passengers. Bags and passports are checked repeatedly, pat downs are common (without the groin grope, thank you TSA) and everything takes time.

On arrival in Kathmandu I was surprised not to be met by the tour company, but luckily a helpful tour operator (perhaps the only one in Kathmandu not looking to fleece me for a dollar...) made a few calls. It turns out the rest of the tour are stuck in London and they weren't expecting me. Instead of going for a wander around Kathmandu, I was stuck in the hotel (which wasn't so bad because it was amazing...) to wait for phone calls, emails and the like explaining what is going on. Turns out that of the four people scheduled to join me on the tour, two have cancelled and two others were likely to cancel. So at this stage, I am on a tour on my own.

This morning saw an early return to the airport for another experience of tight security (although in the first part we were wending our way around the room all the while a stray bag was sitting in the middle of the room with no apparent owner, which was somewhat disconcerting...) I had luckily scored myself a window seat on the right side of the plane, but on boarding a local family asked if they could all sit together, and I did the karmic thing and relented. After the pilot said how great the view was going to be, I asked the flight attendant if there were any more window seats, at which point the family took pity on me and rearranged themselves. Thank god they did because the view was incredibly, and I can now say I have seen Mt Everest (albeit from the sky).

I am in Paro now... One of the main towns in Bhutan. Not the capital, but it is where the airport is. The weather, although a tad cold, is beautiful and clear and the scenery and architecture are fantastic. As I'm currenly the only tour member, I may be able to shuffle a few things around, so that will be a plus. I had hoped the guide would be hip and happening and maybe willing to push the edges of an otherwise very tightly regulated tourism industry, but no luck. He calls himself Petey and he seems nice but certainly not the rebellious type. I guess there is much to risk in pushing the boundaries. So at this stage, it will be me, Petey and the driver whose name I didn't quite catch, and who I am calling Silent Bob in the interim until I can get his name again. He, obviously, doesn't say much...

Anyway, the camera will get a work out. When I get to a computer that has an SD card reader, I will upload some photos... most likely to Facebook. (Although from what I can gather from news.com.au most people are using Facebook to look at nude pictures of Nick Riewoldt, so maybe there's no point....)