A Day In The Life...

Last week has followed much the same pattern as the one before, so there really isn't a great deal to discuss. As a result I shall tell you a little about my typical day.

This involves waking sometime between 5-7am thanks to either the sounds of someone hocking and coughing, or one of the many, many animals making their respective noises. I then lie in bed staring at the mosquito net until the alarm goes off, which I promptly ignore and put on sleep for 20 minutes. You'd think I'd just set it for 20 minutes later wouldn't you?

After that it's breakfast, which on Friday for example, was a bowl of curried beans. You can imagine. Normally however, it is bread of some kind and usually some potatos, they don't really do 'light' breakfasts over here from what I can tell.

Then I head into work and spend my morning writing news articles for www.estately.co.uk - feel free to have a look, although I'm not really sure how much it will excite anyone since I don't know any Estate Agents.

Then comes lunch. This really is a special part of the day. The first few days I went off on my own and read a book for an hour in a nearby cafe, but then the guys & girls in the office invited me to join them and I figured it would be rude to refuse.

We end up in this shack, and I really mean shack as the below picture will show. Thus far I have decided the noodles and veg samosas are pretty safe, of course they are covered with hot sauce, which while tasty is not ideal for one major reason. This shack is hot. I don't just mean a bit sweaty, we're talking sauna hot. After every meal I emerge totally drenched, much to the amusement of the people I am with. I have been trying to weigh up whether or not the absurdly cheap food is worth the pain of the experience.
The guys at work are all nice enough, nobody speaks in the office itself which is a bit sad, they're all afraid they'll get sacked I think, which doesn't make for much of an atmostphere. I'm sure because of that they want to talk non stop when they get out, of course it's all in Nepali so I don't really get much of it. They do however burst out laughing every so often and it's hard not to feel a little self conscious!

After that it's home and a meal of rice and lentils, ahh good old Dal Bhat, love it, before bed at around 10pm. I often sit out on the balcony and chat with Nir or just read a book.

So there it is, a day in the life of me right now. D-Day is fast approaching when I'll have to make a call on whether or not to stay here. I have decided to give it two more weeks but continue to chase options and will see how things stand then. If I do decide to head home then I am planning to take a week in Pokhara before I go so that I have not spent three months solid in Kathmandu - that thought is just depresseing!

Had a great night last night though, another evening with the expats which involved dinner and a few drinks. Brilliant bunch that lot, but this time I managed to take myself home at 11pm due to not having a hotel room booked. It has since emerged that this was a smart move as numerous people ended up back in the Yak and Yeti Casino until 4am and as such are not feeling too clever today! It all sounded very familiar!

With them was a chap called Ed Laughton (no relation to Neil) who was celebrating a successful climb on the north side of Everest. Top lad and incredibly humble, frankly I would have been shouting from the rooftops! He raised money for the Himalayan Rescue Association and is planning to go back next year and climb from the south side while also working with his wife at the Everest ER, super stuff really. He did go down in my estimation however when he produced a round of Tequila. God that stuff's awful.

I have also managed to finally upload all the Peace Nepal Treks slideshows to You Tube so you can view them by clicking here if you didn't manage to see them on Facebook for whatever reason. I've also stuck another video below, just because I can. Until next time, sleep tight.