Pokhara-Kathmandu-Delhi

Just a short update....

We manged to book both a plane ticket and seats on a bus on the same day and it only took about 10 hours of waiting around and going through a half a dozen middle men...

When it came time to pay we wanted to use a credit card and since the hotel we were staying at had no way of doing credit card transaction they had a guy hop on a motorcycle and drive over with a credit card machine... You don't get that kind of service in the states...

The bus ride went pretty smoothly but you could really see the Maoist activity stepping up another notch. Everywhere there were flags and marches and banners supporting the Maoists..

So we manged to make it into Kathmandu and only 4 hrs behind schedule do to the traffic on the one road leading in and out of the city. We were pretty stressed out since we had to then find a travel agency we had never heard of to pick up our plane tickets for the 8th and the office was planning on closing until after the elections.

After about an hr of wandering around, asking people for directions, and a couple phone calls to the travel agency, the nice staff at the Kathmandu Guest House managed to convince the travel agent to come and meet us there instead.

With tickets in hand we wandered around and after stopping in a few places with somehow managed to stay in the same room in the same hotel that we were in the last time we were in Thamel. This time it had a TV in it and I was happy to catch up on some much missed BBC and CNN.

Two days later we were up bright and early once again and on our way to the airport. The streets were all really empty since most people had to return home to there villages to vote in the Election. Made it through the really "tight security" at the entrance to the airport ( about half a dozen people walked right around it, baggage in hand) and proceeded to wait for 3 hours until the ticket counter for our airline opened up.

We were shuffled through a few different rooms and 3 more security checks ( even one as we were boarding the plane) and we scored a window seat facing the North so we could see the mountains as we flew towards India!

This time landing in Delhi wasn't half as intimidating as it was the first time. It was broad day light and we had a pretty good grasp on what to expect. Made it through customs and picked up our baggage and expected to be horded by people as we left the airport. No such luck, everything seemed really calm here as well and we were only asked for money once....

The drive into the Pahar Ganj area too seemed pretty tame compared to how I remembered it being the first time. Maybe it's because I'm just getting used to all of it and there wasn't really any culture shock.

Pahar Ganj is still its usually dirty, dodgy self tho. Plenty of street vendors, drug dealers, and rickshaw wallahs to keep you pretty busy saying "No" or to just ignore. We have a nice hotel and have a train booked for tomorrow at 6:50am up to Derha Dun and then we are off to maybe an Ashram or possibly some rafting...