Arrival in Kathmandu

I'm sitting here in a low speed cybercafe in Kathmandu feeling woozy with extraordinary activity going on in my bowels. Apparently these are some of the symptoms of reactions to altitude differences. I was also taking a while adjusting to attitude differences.

I had the dilemma of interpreting to different sources of information. My friends in Delhi tell me that Indian rupees are acceptable currency for paying for the tourist visa on arrival in Kathmandu airport, but my guidebook tells me that 500 Indian rupee notes are not being accepted in Nepal because of forgery fears (good old neighbourly love). I thought I'd go with the flow and see whether my Indian rupees are changeable and if not, just withdraw at the money exchange office with my credit card.

So after a decent flight into a chilled out 20 degree C Kathmandu I encountered the massive "no visa" queue for people purchasing visas on arrival. After squeezing past some tourists filling forms I found some free forms and then a bit of light elbow coercion got me a spot to fill in my disembarkation (arrival for the vocab. challenged) and visa forms. After filling them up and queuing, I noticed a sign saying that certain currencies were acceptable for the visa fee and they did not include neither Indian nor Nepali rupees. I enquired at the money exchange office and the guy there said I need to get dollars or euros. He didn't want my Indian rupees and couldn't extract dollars from my credit card. I had to go to an ATM at the exterior of the airport (What?!).

Essentially I had to go past the immigration, past the luggage claim hall, past the arrivals lounge and towards the car park. And I did. For an hour or so I was in Nepali territory illegally, with the help of immigration officials (who just said, come back quick when u got the money) and security. I found the ATM and stuck my card in. I plugged in the wrong amount so I had to start again. Selected the right amount of money this time but then got timed out! (They say there is no hurry in Nepal...just like in Kenya...but it seems this particular ATM is made in Germany)."OK, maybe its a visa card thing", said the very helpful ATM guard. So I pushed in my Mastercard. Same story after many tries. Guard then asked me to follow him into the departures area (I was by now getting used to these casual security breaches) and explained to his colleagues my situation. I was beginning to wonder how many people he had helped out that day. There was a money exchange place that could actually withdraw cash for me.

So I got the money and exchanged the relevant amount into dollars and like a salmon went upstream through arrivals back into the immigration queue. By this time, other flights were arriving and so the queue never really reduced. I got the visa and then had to sift thru a pile of luggage to find mine since the conveyors were off and most people had taken their baggage.

I had to wait for about 45 minutes for my pickup since my arrival time turned out sketchy. Basically, the voluntary organisation had organised a guest house stay for me for the duration of my training and a rep. had picked me up. See website: http://www.ktmpeaceguesthouse.com/. The wait was not too bad. I was being entertained by tour company reps and drivers who were flashing their signs and passing by asking me whether I'm Mr. Cohen or Mr. Smith, if I got a hotel to stay in, if Im interested in white water rafting etc. The usual sales ploys but on the whole friendly and not too intimidating.

Raz, the friendly guest house manager collaborates with the volunteer programme to host volunteers during training. He explained the week long religious holiday that is going on and how things will a take little longer than the usual. As I was walking down the narrow steps in quick leaps to the guest house he told me to take it slow. He could tell I'm one of those big city types. Slow is the word: slow internet connections, slow trekking to prevent altitude sickness, slow to rise in the morning, slow in the holidays, slow to depose a brutal monarchy (whoops). Let me stop there as politics is a touchy subject here.

I met Rabyn, one of the programme coordinators today. He just gave me brisk tour of the Thamel area of Kathmandu which is crammed with touristy activities, bazaars etc. Will write more about the place and crazy goings on soon.

Cheers,
K.

Tuk tuks!

If there is one thing to be said about the auto rickshaw experience in India, then it's that it’s an art in itself deserving anthropological studies if remote pacific island environments aren't interesting enough.

Ok, let me set the scene. You got the driver and the passenger. They both vary in certain traits. The driver: mood, friendliness, coherency, patience and honesty. The passenger: mood, tolerance, awareness, fatigue and gullibility. (Note the correlations).

And the settings vary too, from my experiences in North (Delhi) and South (Bangalore, Mysore, Ootacamund, Madurai and Pondicherry) India. However, the authorities are aware of these murky aspects of public transport. To contain the volatile pricing nature of the business of auto rickshaw fares, most cities set up pre-pay booths at strategic points in the city, such as shopping centres and train stations. The passenger agrees to pay at a regulated rate, and retains a slip, containing payment and destination information, from the booth. This is meant to be shown to the selected auto rickshaw driver but must be retained by the passenger until the end of the journey. Let me illustrate with an experience Owen, my course mate from uni, and I had.

Now, I had mentioned different conditions for different people. On arrival to Mysore, by train, from Bangalore we went to the train station pre-pay booth. In the case of this location, one pays a small admin. fee and then pays the agreed amount to the driver at the end of the journey. At this point, it is worth mentioning that costs of transport is comparatively cheap in India but variations in quoted prices brings to question the integrity of fair play in this liberal transport market. However, even regulation of cost does not catch dirty tricks.

Back to the Mysore situation, there I was organising my auto rickshaw under the weight of my rucksack and fatigue from a tiring train journey. I specified the hotel of stay and picked up the slip. So far so good. We bundled our stuff into the tuk tuk (i'm tired of saying auto rickshaw!!), and took off. Midway through the journey, as the tuk tuk weaved through the dense traffic of 2, 3 and 4 wheeler vehicles (motorcycles, tuk tuks and cars for the vocab. challenged), the driver ask for the slip to verify the destination (usually halfway through the journey, they ask for your specific destination, if not mentioned before, but this is sometimes to gauge the passenger awareness of the area).

After a while, he returned it to me and we just sat back enjoying the approaching vista of the grand avenues leading to the Maharajas Palace...plop (that’s the sound of the tuk tuk after brakes are applied)...before we could say " that's the wrong stop", we found ourselves in front of a 4 star hotel (remember, we are running on a low budget system, with each rupee like a spec of gold dust), with the doorman ready to take our bags and the rickshaw driver (cool as u like) announcing our arrival. I looked at my slip; the destination printed was the 4 star hotel!!!

We paid up for the journey and walked away as soon as the scam was clear. Later on Owen and I debated 2 theories of this con trick. Owen suggests that slips were switched when the driver reviewed it during the trip, but my theory is that the trap was set at the prepay both. Basically, I think that because of the mad rush to get accom., we didn’t bother to review the slip yet we were aware of tuk tuk drivers posing as hotel booking agents.

Without knowledge of place of stay or average costs of journeys one is vulnerable. The tuk tuk driver / freelance touts might as well plan your holiday. They are not all that bad. Most are relatively friendly and you get the odd one who swears, in Hindi, too much. We were fortunate but I'd love to hear stories of travelers who've been fleeced cold!

I hope this story wasn’t too dull. I’m not used to this blog thing. I will write more about Delhi and South India soon....

K.

The 10 km race was bananas!

Dear all,

It was an exhausting, exhilarating and exhausting again experience running the 10 kilometre race at Regents Park this Saturday morning at 9am. I finished with a time of 58mins 58.7sec. A personal best from my training point of view and also seeing as it’s my first ever 10 km race.

I woke up still stuffed from eating a pot-full of pasta with mascarpone sauce the night before and took the 6:45am “redeye” train to London. By the time of arrival in London I was hungry again and so bought several bananas before ambling my way to the race venue (more on bananas later….).

It was cloudy earlier on but the skies cleared up which made me regret not bringing my sunglasses but that was the least of my worries. The usual irrational thoughts went through my head: looking at the fellow racers and how well kitted and exercised they are (damn I’m gonna finish last!) or from sweating with the relatively high humidity (I’m gonna pass out into the duck pool to cool down on the last lap!) before even racing!

Tick tock bang! And off we ran! We were probably about 100 runners. The circuit is a simple 3 laps within the park making up the 10k (3.33 km per lap). I pretty much maintained myself in the middle of the race but there were lots of over-takers throughout (another irrational thought: don’t look back, you might be the last one!). My pace was pretty good on the first lap and I could have easily done the race in 52 mins at that rate. There were water points at the end of each lap but I spent most of the water just cooling off my face as it was simmering in the humidity! On the 5 km mark I was doing ok, albeit a bit slower but my pace reduced considerably as my leg muscles started protesting and making excuses. My heart and lung units were still chugging along. (Usually it’s the other way around – muscles powering away like dynamos and heart and lung creaking like they need servicing). At 6 km the leader of the race overtook me. He probably finished at 34 mins!

On the final lap there were a few bursts of inspired faster pace but the uphill sections were murder as my thigh muscles were now becoming allergic to inclines, sweating, and short busts and threatening to go on cramp mode. But it was not so bad compared to a few people whose muscles simply went on strike. I recommended one girl to see the physio on standby at the end of race! I couldn’t even sprint on the home straight; it was more of a sprint as seen in slow motion. It was so good to finish and fall on the soft grass. The excellent race organisers handed out water and bananas. Bananas galore to the point that there was so much surplus I bagged 3 bunches. In the end I rewarded myself with a full English breakfast at the Globetrotter pub on Baker Street.

The things we do to raise money, eh! My dad just had to remind me that I did a half Tergat (Paul Tergat is a famous Kenyan long distance runner – who goes to the same barbershop as me in Nairobi believe it or not, £1.50 a cut – with shampoo, bargain!….I digress), an encouraging reality check (the glass is half full)!

My new Hope and Home friends in Nepal will probably be amused and impressed by this effort or probably shrug and compare it with their efforts climbing Everest, Annapurna or K2 making me feel like I took a brisk walk to the London Zoo to feed the monkeys bananas.

Bananatastic! By the way, it’s still not too late to honour pledges and donate. I still have a month to go before I travel. At the moment, I estimate that £200 has been pledged. The £500 target is for real, let’s do it! Many thanks!

Much love,

Kyrea

WRITTEN ON MONDAY 3RD SEPTEMBER

Travel Diary

INDIA LEG
----------
Thursday
04-Oct-07
Departure to Delhi

- Delhi
- Bangalore
- Mysore
- Ootacamund
- Nilgiri Mountains
- Madurai
- Tiruchchipalli
- Pondicherry I'M HERE!
- Chennai
- Delhi


Until....
Sunday
21-Oct-07

NEPAL LEG
-----------
Tuesday
23-Oct-07
Departure to Kathmandu

- Kathmandu
- Pokhara
- The Everest Trek

Until....
Sunday
02-Dec-07

SOUTH AMERICA LEG
-------------------
Friday
07-Dec-07
Departure to Buenos Aires

- Argentina
- Brazil?Chile?Peru?
- Ecuador

Until....
Monday
18-Feb-08