World Expeditions

 1 - 2 Nov 2012

So we arrived at the 5 star Radisson on Nov 1st and were greeted quite rudely by the World Expeditions help desk guy. We don't know what was up his arse but it must've been nasty. He did not smile and he seemed permanently angry with us. We were happy to get our room key and get away from him.

We dumped our bags and headed off down the street to find somewhere to eat. It wasn't like Thamel here, we seemed to be away from everything. We did manage to find a little restaurant though and ordered our fav chicken chili momos. The waiter said "You know, very hot?" He wasn't sure we wanted hot, "Yes that's fine" We smile happily, not aware of just how hot these momos were going to be. Sam and I are chili lovers, we eat it alot and can handle more then most people I know can. As if we wouldn't want these ones? ;)

As we are sitting there waiting for our food we suddenly hear all the kitchen staff having coughing fits and soon the bar staff are following them. We look at each other and in that precise moment a wave of chili wafts through the air and suffocates us both, leading us into coughing fits. Oh shit. Is that our momos? haha we are in for a treat! When the guy bought them out I waited patiently for Sam to have the first one. Watching his face careful, so as to see his reaction. Of course he shows nothing and raves about how amazing they are and devours one after the other. I soon join and realise how amazing they are! Wow! The sauce was delicious and I couldn't get enough! But of course they were fucking hot and the chili kept building up. Soon I was fanning myself and my lips were burning! Bloody good I have to say.

We had to meet our tour guide and other trek member in the lobby at 4.30pm. At 4.20pm our room phone rings, Sam answers, gives me a frown and says "we're coming!" in a tense voice before hanging up. It was our dear angry friend grumbling at us as to why we aren't in the lobby already. Umm hello, we still have fucking 10mins!

We get down there and meet our guide 'Trin' and an older lady by the name of 'Chris' who was from Melbourne. She seemed pretty nice but Sam was already hesitant about our trek because she was much older. Immediately Trin asks us for 2 visa photos, which we don't have on us of course. So back we go to our room. As we're in there the phone rings again. This time I answer it. The same grumpy voice snaps back at me "Are you going to the lobby!?"  I reply "yes we were just down there but he asked us to get our visa photos!". I hung up. What an arse. Seriously.

Our meeting seemed rather pointless. Other then the complimentary beer each which Sam and I fell in love with. It was Tuborg, a premium 5.5% beer we hadn't tried yet. Definitely our favourite so far. It was heavenly. We got one each and they are huge bottle necks. Chris asked for a Soda Water. Who in their right mind gets a soda water when you're given a complimentary drink??? Already we had doubts about this woman. Trin went over everything we already knew as I had read all the paperwork. Still a free beer and getting to know Trin was good. He was extremely shy and quiet and we had to keep probing things out of him, he didn't just talk on his own. It was strange.

After our meeting Sam and I caught a taxi to Thamel to find somewhere for dinner and Sam wanted to buy some light trekking pants while I wanted this fluffy jacket I'd eyed in the last few days. Most people had been asking for 2000 ($24) rupees or higher. I thought that was alot! They wouldn't go down so I refused to buy it. Again while Sam was buying his pants I tried to buy this jacket but still no luck.

We ate dinner at a Indian/Nepalese restaurant with amazing curries. I was pretty full from our lunch but still stupidly ordered anyway. My curry came with a mountain of rice and I couldn't finish it of course. After not finishing my plate the first night at the local Nepalese place I had quickly realised how they get offended as they think you don't like their food. So as I had a huge mountain of rice still on my plate Sam and I tried to sneak our when they weren't around. But as we were paying the waiter comes running over "Aww did you not like your curry?", Again we had to defend it and say I was simply too full, but it was delicious!

The next morning World Expeditions had organized a half day tour around Kathmandu. So we head down to the lobby ready for the 8.30am departure. Trin got me to hand write that Sam and I are going on the tour and sign it because apparently he was told by the Brisbane office that we weren't doing it. Wtf. How did they get that?

The tour was ok, but the guide 'Sri' talked too much crap and was really boring, so I kept zoning out. I don't think there is one thing I can even repeat on here. The first temple we went to was where the Nepalese carry out their funerals with a traditional cremation. So we are literally watching as these women are wailing around a dead body (which was covered in material). They were doing some ritual before they carried the body off to get cremated, which we could see to. It was pretty hectic. As we're watching this all of a sudden we see a monkey. I turn to point him out to Sam and as I do there is another one, and then another, and before you know it there are hundreds of them! What the hell. Where did they come from?

We walked past some gurus who were heavily dressed and painted, chanting with their legs crossed. Sri tells us that they come every day and have lots of Marijuana for breakfast before sitting here and chanting. You could pay them 100 rupee ($1.25) for a photo but I didn't like the commercial way about it.

The second temple we went to was the big Buddha. It was pretty boring here. The sun was hot as well and there was no shade. Our guide would not shut up and talked about heaps of crap we didn't care about. Eventually it was time to head back to the Radisson for our afternoon of chill out and take advantage of the free Wi Fi. We went to Thamel for lunch first then did more shopping. We had to get some more trekking items like walking poles plus I still needed that jacket as I didn't have a warm enough one and also some gloves. Sadly I had to pay 2000 rupees in the end but I got the guy down from 2,800, so thats better then nothing I suppose.

We had to meet Trin at 5pm to go over our morning plan. Again it was useless, all he told us was we had to be ready to go by 7am.

We packed our kit bags that night which included a sleeping bag, liner for the colder nights and a huge down jacket. We also charged all our camera batteries, ipods, kindle etc... Ready for 19days of camping. Who knows when we'll have power again. I fell into another restless sleep that night, wondering just how hard this trek was going to be. Little did I know then... Little did I know...