India/Nepal Trip - Part 5

Jan 15 - Sticking with a common theme of the trip, we were up before dawn to drive to the top of a nearby hill to watch the sun rise over the Annapurna mountains. The sunrise was so gorgeous it almost made us forget that we were losing feeling in our fingers and toes from the cold :-) Unfortunately, the super low light was really beyond what my little point-and-shoot camera could handle, but I should be able to steal pics from people who had better cameras later. I promise I'll get pics from the trip up as soon as possible and post the link here. After defrosting a bit, we all got back in the bus to drive to our final stop on the trip - Kathmandu. Upon arriving in Kathmandu, we visited the Monkey Temple (which was pretty touristy and not particularly exciting), then we went to the hotel to enjoy much needed hot showers before our farewell dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Jan 16 - Our group started splitting up today :-( Some people are heading directly home to the places like the US, Australia, and Europe, while others are continuing traveling in Asia. It's been a great trip and our group got along really well, so it's sad to part ways. Never fear though - we made sure to all become Facebook friends, so we'll be able to stay in touch that way at least.

I opted out of this pricey optional activity, but some people who didn't have early flights tried to do an Everest flight this morning (contrary to my expectations, you cannot see Mt. Everest or any big mountains from Kathmandu). Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate, so their flight never ended up taking off. They got fully refunded, but it was still quite a disappointment for them. Those of us still around later in the day wandered around and did a bit more shopping. We went out for one last dinner with our rapidly dwindling group at an awesome funky middle eastern restaurant that we stumbled on. What a great way to end an amazing two weeks!

Jan 17 - Last night we started hearing rumors about a strike today. Strikes are almost as common as power cuts here and can seriously disrupt people's ability to move around the city, so everyone with a flight anytime today headed to the airport before dawn to be on the safe side. The four of us remaining discovered relatively quickly that the strike wasn't really happening after all, so we did some more exploring and just hung and relaxed until it was time for me to catch a cab to go meet an old friend from CARE who works at the US Embassy here now. He is also a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (he served in Cape Verde), so we had a nice evening reminiscing about our Peace Corps experiences and talking about Foreign Service. I also successfully made Chicken Yassa (one of my favorite Gambian dishes) in a western kitchen for the second time. I'm practically a pro now!

Jan 18 - My morning flight was rescheduled for mid-afternoon, so I got to spend the morning hanging out in my friend's comfy Embassy apartment catching up on email and enjoying amenities like heat and hot water. I'll head to the airport in an hour or so, and if all goes as planned, I will spend the night in Delhi (blegh), then join my wonderful husband in Normandy tomorrow evening :-)