Home Away From Home

Our hotel here in Kathmandu is great!  At Hotel Courtyard we have good restaurants within easy walking distance and friendly, interesting fellow guests to talk to at the hotel.  We have spent a whole week here and gotten to know the owners, Pujan and Michelle, well.  They have been way more available and engaging than owners of any other hotels where we have stayed.  On our first night they invited us out to dinner at the Thamel House with two other people.  Pujan's uncle owns that hotel and restaurant.  We were served the “Pujan special” which was a delicious sampling of Newari food.

Over our entire stay there of a week preparing for our trek, we had dinner with them at least three times, plus we were invited to a party at the hotel, celebrating their friend Clay’s 40th birthday.  It turns out he is from Bethesda of all places! (Where Mom grew up.)
- Brook and Eydie

In the States we put a significant amount of effort into keeping our backpacks light (see photo in July posting).  We only brought clothes for warm weather since we are following summer around the world. We planned to purchase specialty items that we need along the way.  So, here we are in Kathmandu on a marathon-shopping extravaganza, carefully selecting cheap, knock-off gear and warm knock-off clothing for our trek.  The tiny store where we did most of this, and found sleeping bags to rent, is called Shona’s.  Shona is a small woman who expresses big opinions on trekking gear’s do’s and don’ts.  Listening to her reminded me of the woman from whom I had bought a pair of fleece bibs, against her strong advice, for my Langtang trek back in 1989.  But my mind’s eye placed this memory in a different looking shop.  I asked Shona if she operated a shop in the 1980’s in a different location than her current one.  She said yes and then I was sure that this was the very same person that I had used as a trekking outfitter 22 years ago!

We are also having a regular date with the ATM machine.  We don’t expect to find a cash machine during our month in the mountains, and we will be paying for our food and lodging in cash the whole time, so we’re withdrawing it all now, maxing out our daily limit for several days in a row.  But the ATM’s here have a low limit for how much you can take with each transaction, so we insert our card and PIN 14 times each daily visit and end up with a huge stack of low denomination bills.  It is the most cash and the most number of bills that we have every carried around!
- John