We were up at 05:30 hrs. to watch sunrise over the Himalayas, but cloud cover completely blanked out the view so we returned to bed. I re-emerged at 09:00 hrs. to join George on the terrace for porridge. I felt a lot better as we sipped tea and watched the wretches set off in an endeavour to walk back to Bhaktapur.
A one-kilometre walk brought us to the bus stop for the 10:00 hrs. minibus, which was already crammed full, but we squeezed aboard. The bus crawled down the hillside at an infuriatingly slow pace, stopping every ten yards to pick up more passengers. It got ridiculously packed and we jostled and were jostled back, unable to even stand up straight. Two kilometres from the centre we got off and walked into Durbar Square, unable to stand the crush any longer. En-route I bought a new toothbrush (whatever happened to Jordan’s toothbrushes?).
From the Nyatapola Temple, after a quick photo session, we decided to walk the seven miles back to Kathmandu. The road was pleasant with it’s line of trees on each side screening it from the activity of harvest in the fields on either side. We stopped once for a coke and again on the outskirts of the city where we dozed in the sun by a bridge while two dogs growled and barked at each other in the shallows of the lazy river.
We trudged wearily into town and did the rounds of the lodges off “Freak Street”, getting increasingly angrier with each statement of “no vacancies”. Eventually we found a grubby side street place with a double cell for 22 Nepalese Rupees (with no blankets, 33 Rs if we required this luxury).
We returned our hired rucksacks and sleeping bags and hit the Youngdung to replace our lost energy with some solid fuel. I enjoyed a good sweet’n’sour vegetable with egg fried rice, followed by apple fritters and custard. George settled down to what he described as the worst meal that he had ever had in his life. This comprises of gristle fried rice (always best to avoid meat in India and Nepal as the animals are valuable for milk and eggs and only become meat when they die of old age!) with a pancake covered in a nasty brown sauce.
This left him so unsatisfied that we moved on to the Ashok Pie Restaurant for a decent meal. I sipped tea as George ate and we made plans for getting to the Chitwan National Park (Nepali: चितवन राष्ट्रिय निकुञ्ज) which is the first national park in Nepal. It was established in 1973 and granted the status of a World Heritage Site in 1984. It covers an area of 952.63 km (367.81 square miles) and is located in the subtropical Inner Terai lowlands of south-central Nepal in the districts of Nawalpur, Parsa, Chitwan and Makwanpur. In altitude it ranges from about 100 m (330 ft) in the river valleys to 815 m (2,674 ft) in the Churia Hills. Chitwan has the largest population of Indian rhinoceros in Nepal.
Our disgust at the Kathmandu posing community was renewed. One wanker in the Youngdung ordered his food and then struck up a meditation pose in the lotus position! On departing the Ashok Pie Restaurant we browsed an expensive second-hand bookshop before returning to our filthy unwholesome room in the G. C. Lodge. It was quite the dirtiest room we had stayed in yet, so we photographed it for posterity. This dreadful room broke the last thread of resolve in Georges struggle in paying an extortionate 28 Nepalese Rupees for a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut Chocolate (21.9 Nepalese Rupees were equivalent to £1 sterling at this time). “I need it to cheer me up”, he quipped as he set off for the shop.
The wafer-thin walls of our room led us to inadvertently earwig (eavesdrop) a foreign bird in the next room being ripped off by one of the local money-changing, drug dealing scum that frequent this unsavoury area.
Dogs barking and loud alien Indian and Nepalese music added to the destruction of our tranquillity. Instead of chocolate I bought the book “Jabberwocky” for 14 Nepalese Rupees to cheer me up. "Jabberwocky " is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
However, this book by Ralph Hoover (A pseudonym used by American writer Paul Spike) was related to the Terry Gilliam film rather than the poem. According to the blurb on the back of the book:
What the press said about Terry Gilliam's film of Jabberwocky:
Eurgggggghhhyowww! - The Times of India
Oh! Arhh! OhnoOhnoOhno .. (thud) - Daily Telegraph
Ayeeeeeiiiiioooaaaargh! - The Economist
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit! - The Sun
Now read for yourself the amazing story of the Jabberwocky - the monster so terrifying that people caught the plague to avoid it.
Set in the filthiest period of history, as the Middle Ages were collapsing around the well-dandruffed head of King Bruno the Questionable, it is the story of the King's attempts to save a cast of thousands (filthy peasants, scrubber maids, dim princesses and overweight knights) from the threat of the Jabberwocky.
He is helped by Dennis Cooper (a peasant's peasant) who, enflamed by undying love for 19-stone Griselda Fishfinger, gives up a quiet country life for the fleshpots of the city where after many expensive adventures, he wins the hand of a Princess and the Middle Ages are saved.
We dozed off fully clad, me wrapped in my YHA sleeping sheet and George in his red nylon anorak.
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