Last Resort 28th May 2006

I woke to the sound of the ‘breakfast’ bell. I looked at my watch; it was 07:00 on Sunday morning! I looked around the tent, the front door was wide open and Don was crashed out, Wolf was nowhere to be seen! I lay in bed for half an hour and it was starting to get very warm in the tent so I went and had a shower. A cold shower. A very very cold, Nepali mountain water shower. Christ, it was so cold it nearly stripped the flesh from my bones. I later found out that there was a hot water shower in the next shower block. Doh!

Breakfast was omelette and beans on toast, which hit the spot. There was more live music on stage from 10:00 onwards, so we settled in to listen to that. I started off with acoustic Nepalese music, which was ok, but then Reggae man came out. Things started to turn bad then (musically), as he must have left his voice back in the tent. He was dreadful, and it wasn’t just me that thought that. I was looking forward to hear him after enjoying his performance last night, but the acoustic set didn’t work and it was pretty painful in places. I got up after about half an hour and went to go across the bridge and check my bike out before riding back to Kathmandu. Unfortunately they were doing bungee jumping, so I couldn’t cross the bridge. I hung around there for a while and watched people jumping into the gorge (most of them attached to a bungee cord…) and then went back to the others. Reggae man was still singing and he hadn’t got any better. Dessie had enough by this stage and went to check if the bridge was open and he came back about ten minutes later and told me that it was, so we could make out escape.

We arranged to meet the others at 13:00 to ride back to Kathmandu, so Dessie and I had a cup of Chai and looked over our bikes and then watched the bungee jumpers from the other side of the bridge. We met some Canadian guy on a bicycle, he’s been touring around the world for the past three years and he was on the last leg and would finish up in Kathmandu. We had a really good conversation with him and found out that he’s a little ahead of schedule and his house will not be empty in Quebec for another couple of weeks, so he’s going to fly to Norway and cycle down to Paris before getting his plane. I’ve seen nearly half a dozen Western cyclists since I’ve been in Nepal, I didn’t see one in India, which is surprising seeing as though 80% of Nepal is covered in mountains. The others turned up at 13:30 as the bridge was closed and we all made our way back to Kathmandu. The group got pretty fragmented as some people were staying in different parts of the city and others had things to do. I rode most of the way with Dessie and we went to stay in the guesthouse that I stayed in with Rick and Mo on Friday night. The only problem was is that Dessie didn’t know where the guesthouse was and I didn’t know Kathmandu. I told him if he brought me to the edge of Thamel (district) I should recognise the turn for the guesthouse. We negotiated our way through the city (always the worst part on a motorbike) and he pulled over and asked me where the guesthouse was. I didn’t recognise where we were! I asked him if he was sure this was the road and he said it’s where Rick told him it was. I had another look and spotted the side road we had to take, turns out that we approached it from the other direction, which is why I hadn’t recognised the turn off.

We ended up back at Jazz Upstairs and had some more lovely food and a couple of beers, it was an early night though and I was back in the room by 22:00. I was sharing a room with Dessie and he was leaving at 05:30 the next morning, I told him that I’d see how I felt in the morning before agreeing to go with him.