Greetings from Kathmandu

Namaste to everyone back home. We got into Kathmandu last night around 5, local time. After a very good flight.

Spent monday being tourists around London. First thing we saw when we got off the underground was a pizza hut and then we turned aroun to a McDonalds ad. We wandered around, and were surprised when at Lunch we looked at our map and had knocked off a good a good amount of things on our list. Neither Dave nor I realized how close all the touristy things in London were. We saw Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace at the same time as trying to dodge some sort of rally that had started in trafalgar sqaure and was marching around

The flight to Bahrain was great, we got bumped up to business class, enjoyed a very nice meal (with cloth tablecloths) and enjoyed the chance to stretch our legs. It was pretty cloudy so the Himalayan Giants didn't show themselves.

Kathmandu airport was a zoo, but once we figured out which forms we needed it was actually quicker getting a new visa than already having one. Met with our driver and took a terrifying drive to the hotel. They drive on the wrong side of the road. (The British Side), don't really have lanes, and busses, motorcycles, bikes, rickshaws and pedestrians are all there, with no one really having the right of way. Dave was excited to see a monkey on the side of the road. I didn't see it. We got to the hotel and could feel the 1400 m asl altitude change at the top of the stairs on the 4th floor. Poured ourselves some of our very fine scotch to calm the nerves.

Met the rest of the team and went out to dinner with Puru. Excellent food. very similar to any of the indian restaurants in toronto (I think they had the same bowls too) had a Thunderstorm and power failure halfway through dinner.

Today we are all meeting for breakfast in the hotel, in about 20 minutes and then are getting out to do various touristy things around Kathmandu. There is someone waiting for the computer now so I'm going to sign off.