Arrived in Kathmandu and I felt great relief of actually making it by bike, two other times I had been arriving on the top of a truck, due to bike problems.
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The Nepali way of solving electrical problems. |
To make some very long stories short: We had heaps of problems to decide where to next. Hung around planning, set for one plan, changed plan and so for ever and ever.
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A super happy tailor! |
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An old man watching the hordes of tourists walking past close to Freak Street. |
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Nepal is going down the drain for sure and the Maoist guerrillas are getting more and more support. |
The main one to go back to China, couldn't push ourselves to go down on the overcrowded flatlands of India and the rest of the sub continent.
Either to go for the eastern parts of Tibet directly or do some renegade mountaineering on the way. Met a man who had been climbing Cho Oyo tow times illegally and that sounded like a good idea. Started to get the necessary gear together and everything seemed to work out fine...that was when Murphy played out all the high cards...
First: Riots! An Indian actor said in a TV program that he really hated Nepali people and the the country he hated the most was Nepal. The city was in a state of chaos for over a week and the shopping for more gear was almost impossible. Have seldom seen more misdirected aggression - the Nepalese burned, smashed and in general fucked up their own country because of what an Indian actor had said...where is the logic? On the other hand, Nepal is going down the drain and I can easily see why they wanna went some of the anger on something.
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Kathmandu in flames. |
Second: My friend was almost shot when he was training in the hills outside Kathmandu. Two guys fired their guns at him from close range and it was a miracle that they didn't hit him. My friend got himself some support and weapons and went up into the mountains again with bloody murder on his mind. That took another week.
Third: We were waiting for some gear. A GPS my friend had ordered never arrived and that also kept us waiting.
The final strike against our plan: I broke my foot! In the bloody hotel room! Embarrassing!
The craziest of it all: All this, the riots, the murder attempt, the broken foot etc. could have been avoided if the post man had delivered the gear we had ordered in time. The GPS had been laying around in the post office for over two weeks!
The bottom line is: It's all the post man's fault!
The climbing was out of the question with a broken foot. Still thought about cycling through Tibet, but my friend (med. doctor) strongly advised me not to.
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The foot was getting better after some weeks of resting and relaxing. |
So, what the hell could we do? The foot was getting better and I didn't want to stop the cycling all together....maybe I could try it out in some easier areas than going to Tibet in the middle of the winter...
Changed all plans over night and went to Greece!