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Today the team all visited a
Buddhist temple in Nepal to receive blessings of good will and to spin the
prayer wheels. After this we headed to do some last minute shopping in
Kathmandu ( Oh Kate's such a little liar, imagine saying that she was bored
going around all the gear shops in Kathmandu, she was the one dragging us to
all the shoe shop's, is that all matters to a woman? ). Oh Adrian's rucksack
has still not been found, so he has decided to purchase replacement equipment,
now this was not helped by the fact that Adrian's feet are size 13, however
after some time he managed to replace all the necessary kit for $150, all
original manufacture no copies they told us! So the next any of us need any
equipment we are coming to Kathmandu instead of going to the shops in the UK.
Anyway after lunch, we left the pollution and smog of Kathmandu behind and
traveled out along what is probably one of the worst roads in the world, sheer
drops for most of the way, no road surface with many obstructions along the
way, vehicle passing by mere inches between them, the only positive thing is
that they don't travel very fast. Nepal is a beautiful country, but it's so
poor and unfortunately the political situation is not helping either, we
passed through numerous Maoist army check points along the way and thankfully
we encountered no problems. After traveling for five hours we thankfully
arrived at our accommodation for the night, now normally in the western world
you park and walk a few meters from the car to the door, in Nepal you take a
4x4 from the road for some distance, then you trek up some seriously steep
ground for fifteen minutes and then you have arrived, I must say however that
you are far more grateful to have arrived at your hotel in Nepal than in
Europe.
That's all from me for today
over to you Kate....
Let me just set the record
straight on the shopping? I have not been in any shoe shops- I was too tired
after being trailed round all those gear shops! When we finally managed to
extract everyone from the shops in Kathmandu, we piled bags of gear onto the
bus for our journey into the unknown. What a journey!
The roads at home are
motorways in comparison to the mountain roads leading out of Kathmandu. They
are just slightly bigger than the width of a bus, so when lorries come
hurtling towards you and there is a straight drop down into the valley below,
we all found ourselves breathing in and hoping for the best. Due to the skills
of our bus driver we passed safely through the smog of Kathmandu and up into
the foothills of the Himalaya.
As night fell we still had
not reached our hotel, and to be honest I wasn't expecting very much since I
had been assured that the life of luxury would end in Kathmandu. The off-road
drive in the 4x4, and trek up steep steps (struggling under the weight of all
the gear Raymond had bought in the last few days) didn't bode well for our
accommodation. Yet again I was surprised by the level of comfort our hostel
has afforded us- a loo, a running shower and a feed of Sherpa stew has set us
all up for whatever tomorrow brings. I'm told that we will be heading further
up the valley towards Nylam where we will try some light walking for a few
days, so watch this space!
Finally after 5 hours I have
just got this Sat connection to work its 12 at night, I am going to bed!!!!
Sorry run out of battery
power when sending this through!!!!
Climbers: Jon Salter, Neil Elliott, Raymond
Hassard, Fergal Corrigan, Steve Hodge, Geoffrey Weir...
Dispatches
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