5am (yawn :0 pretty tired at this point) took the coach earlier than normal due to the May Day rallies that were starting the next day. We drove and queued until we reached Kathmandu and then visited the monkey temple, it was not great and Helen and I have developed a bit of a monkey phobia as they seem to be rather aggressive and tend to steal things! On to the hotel where we then went to namaste cafe for really good veggie burgers and then had a well needed nap. Our final dinner as a group was held at Rum Doodle and we presented the group awards for the most random things and of course best/worst experiences. It was sad to say goodbye to our electic little group but it turns out it wasn't a final farewell. Ok, up at, yes you guessed it 4AM!!!!! but for a very, very good reason. Taxi to the domestic terminal at the airport and waited and waited till 7.15am when we were allowed onto our little Jetstream-41 plane that seated 20 of us (all in window seats) and we took off and headed towards the mountains. After 10mins of taking off we cleared the slightly fuzzy weather over Kathmandu and reached 21000ft where the sky was bright blue. One by one we were called up and allowed to enter the cockpit and our pilot pointed out Everest (the one on the left in the photo). It was a great flight and a brilliant experience, one we will not forget. We returned to our hotel and checked out, moving on to the Kathmandu Guest House. Unfortunately that meant walking through the middle of one of the rallies which was a little intimadating. That evening we met with the remaining people from our group and had dinner at one of the few restaurants that was open. The next day everything was shut so we had to return to our old hotel to eat lunch and then rested. In the evening we all met up again and went to OR2K an Israeli restaurant where we sat on the cushions on the floor and were served the most amazing falafel, houmous and flat bread for dinner. While we were eating a riot could be heard in the street below and we were glad to be moving on the following day. We said a final farewell to our friends and then hurried back to our hostel to pack. At 6am on the Monday morning we couldn'y get a taxi due to the strikes but thankfully the government laid on tourist buses so we got to the airport and took our flight to Thailand, hopeful we weren't leaving one area of unrest for another.