We had arrived into Kathmandu, at last. The scrum in the airport wasn't as bad as we were expecting, as we'd read bad things about it. We found out that we had changed time zones by two and a quarter hours (Nepal runs on quarter of an hour time zones...). For entry into the country, we had to fill out a form, fill out a form on a computer and photograph ourselves, pay at one desk for the visa ($40 USD each), and get everything checked and stamped at another desk. This done, with minimal queuing, we headed into the baggage collection area. The board never said which carousel our luggage was on but we eventually found it, had our luggage tags checked by a security chap, and were set free into the hoardes of touts trying to sell us massively overpriced taxis.

We looked for a working cashpoint and failed, so had to head back into the airport to change some US dollars to Nepalese rupees at a bad exchange rate, whilst fighting off the touts at every stage . With rupees in hand, we were ready to negotiate for a taxi. A man claimed to be there from our bed and breakfast and got us into a taxi with another chap, who apparently rode for free whilst trying to sell us things. It was all quite a harrowing experience. We were dropped off as near to our bed and breakfast as the driver could get, and we found it down a wiggly narrow side street. We were staying in the Thamel district, a commercial neighburhood popular with tourists. Ken compared it to a crazy night market operating all day and night. The taxi journey itself was overwhelming, with the traffic, noise, occasional holy cow blocking the road, horns blaring and touts shouting at us.

The bed and breakfast was the cheapest place we'd stayed in our travels to date. So we expected it to be a bit grimy. It was a bit grimy, but did the job. The downsides were no toilet seat (though they said they would get one, they didn't) and the people behind the front desk constantly trying to sell us things and asking us about our plans.

Aye, there's the rub. We had vague plans, but specifics eluded us. Our plan had been to get our Indian visa whilst in Kathmandu. This, we found out, was now a lengthy, costly and complex process, taking 8 days, or longer if there was an issue, and several trips to the visa office. Whilst in Nepal, we wanted to see different parts of the country and couldn't devote that long exclusively to Kathmandu. We weighed up travelling to another destination and doubling back on ourselves to pick up the visa at a later date, but this was impractical due to time constraints. We also had vague plans for trekking in Nepal, but hadn't done the research to know which trek we wanted to do. We'd wanted to do a long-ish trek but toyed with the idea of doing a short or a couple of shorter ones. Basically, with the Indian visa process hanging over us, we were having difficulty formulating a plan for Nepal which fit in everything we wanted to do. Being asked multiple times a day what our plans were was wearing a bit thin.

All this brain ache, on top of the fact that we hadn't slept much, meant that we deferred making any decisions and concentrated on the basics, like eating and showering. We found a momo place but it was shut, and found a vegetarian restaurant but it too was shut for renovations. We found another vegetarian restaurant a couple of roads away and headed there, for a delicious meal. We drank some glorious tea and managed the brain ache with a side dish of momos. Dodging the bikes, motorcyles, taxis, cars and vans that hared around every corner, we wound our way back to the bed and breakfast. It was hectic on the streets and it was totally overwhelming. That evening we managed to stay up to a relatively decent time, in an attempt to adjust to the time zone changes.

We later discovered that the Indian e-TV process was now newly available to British people, meaning that we could complete the visa process online. So on Wednesday 14th, we opted to try to do the application online instead. We still needed to do things like photograph ourselves to a certain set of specifications, against a white background (white backgrounds were surprisingly hard to come by in Kathmandu) and submit a pdf version of the photograph page of our passports, again to certain specifications. This took a while to get sorted out, as did the completing of the visa application online, followed by the payment process. Luckily, breakfast had been good, and had given us enough sustenance to last out the process. After everything had been submitted, we tried the momo place again to find it was still shut, and headed back to the open vegetarian restaurant for a good meal.   

We had decided to get on with the stuff we really wanted to do, and aimed to leave Kathmandu for Pokhara the following day. This required a bus ride and therefore a bus ticket. We asked at our reception, but just didn't trust the man behind the counter. We'd heard lots of claims of a petrol crisis, and this was being used as an 'excuse' for everything. We headed out to try to find the bus stop, which was apparently just the side of a road, with no landmark or anything. We stopped into a nearby nice looking hotel to ask for advice, and were told the same information we'd already received. That made us feel a bit better. We did buy a bus ticket off a chap in the bed and breakfast, and he said he would walk us to the bus stop the following morning to make sure we got on the right bus. We didn't believe him, but it was a nice thought. We'd been rained on when out on our excursion to look for the bus stop, but there was no water in the bed and breakfast for a shower. This too was blamed on the petrol crisis. We asked about momos in the vicinity, and were advised to go two doors down for super cheap and delicious momos. We double checked that they would be vegetarian, and half an hour later they were delivered to us in the bed and breakfast reception. They were very nice, and just what we wanted.

It was an early start, with an alarm at 5am. We'd pre-ordered breakfast so that it would be ready at 6am. There was still no water in the bed and breakfast, so we contented ourselves with packing up and looking forward to some coffee.

We went to the reception area at 5 minutes to 6, to find one of the chaps from the bed and breakfast asleep on the couch. We woke him up and asked after our breakfast, which he flatly denied existed. After a few minutes of back and forth, he went to make breakfast and we got most of what we should have had - the rest took too long to make. We finished up just in time for another of the chaps from the bed and breakfast to arrive, and true to his word of the previous day, he walked us to the bus stop and our bus. The roads were much more bearable with minimal traffic. The best part of this journey was seeing four monkeys climbing along the electricity cables, dangling over the pavement. We took a quick snapshot and kept going to the bus (in fact, this was the only photo we took in Kathmandu. It was too overwhelming to get the camera out on the other days). We tipped chappy and climbed in the bus.

Having seen pretty much nothing of Kathmandu, bar a few streets in the Thamel area, we were off to our next destination - Pokhara!