BHUTAN - This section title has vanished, so the rest of everything will be here unless the title & picture reappear.

I don't know how to put this, but happily only 20,000 of us tourists are allowed in each year. We fly out of Nepal having been woken at 5am to catch the 9 am flight. We hang around the airport, having discarded most of the stodgy buns & bruised apples for what seems like a lot more than 3 hours. There are eight of us, including someone who has come as a publicity agent. We are mostly of 'mature years'- it's not a budget trip.

Up & away, in flight meal is coleslaw sarnies, in flight entertainent is a runing commentary on which mountains are going by on the left. No kidding, the plane does a definate lurch past everest to the clicking of cameras. After sliding between mountains with millimeters to spare each side, it's touchdown at Paro. A bus takes us 50 yards to the arrivals hall. After passport control we are met by Dorgi 1 who is chief sheepdog for us for the next 2 weeks.

The plan is to travel in a minibus about 2/3 s the way across east, get out for 3 days of walking in a circle around the Bumthang area, returning along pretty much the same route (mountains make for restricted road choices.) However to make it more fun, we stop over in different places each way.

There are an awful lot of Buddist temples in this part of the world. The Tibetans sent some very effective lamas over, plus a buddist dragon god flew over & he/it landed halfway down a massive cliff, which has led to quite the most amazing & until recently, inaccessible, building mass ever- the tiger's nest. It is very helpful to have shoes without laces or buckles, as shoes have to be left outside sacred places.

Our bus driver is Dorgi 2. We stop after 20 minutes drive for a photo opportunity, Dorgi1 & I come to an agrement that I can walk on & be picked up when the bus moves on. I find it good to have made this pre-emptive strike, as subsequently it is accepted without question, as I'm the only person without a camera or three. It can be wearysome as th

3 FINL BITE AT KATHMANDU

although the entries seem to e hopping about all over the place, & Bhutan,Beijing & N Korea seem to have vanished., before I've even started them.

It really was horrid comig back to the noise, dirt and dust after Bhutan. As soon as the others had departed home, I decamped to the Kathmadu Guest House. This is where many of the early Everest expeditions set out from. I was shown into a reasonable ensuite, but discovered at 2am that the window overlooked a street with a dog that barked non-stop to dawn. They kindly offered me an instant relocation next morning, when I enquired if it would be possible. Result, a lush room with king size bed and much better bathroom, & no street dogs in the night!! Life istantly got better.

Armed with a map, and with further help from reception, I made for the Botanical Gardens. These proved to be disappointing in that it didn't match memories of 40 years ago - again a sad lack of funds & staff. BUT they have a budding research station, which was iteresting, including a water harvesting net, a frost avoiding nursery pit and a watering system that was servng 60 tomato plants on 50 litres twice a week. Geting there by 2 microbuses was interesting. These are 12 seaters, but the average total was 20, goig up to 25 max, and that involved the fare collector, clinging on the roofrack outside. Health & Safey dosen't get a look in here.

Did lots of wandering around, discovering that in general the heavily tourist bits were the messiest/smelliest areas - what conclusion to draw there?!

The Royal Palace was quite extraordinary. It was rebuilt following an earthquake collapse and the return of te Royal Family 60+ years ago. At the time, size must have been everything, a less friendly and impersonal space is difficult to imagine. It has all the grace of a soviet style building. Clearly someone realised that they could make money from tourists, and indeed we were there in droves, as were the Nepalese, at a fraction of the price foreigners paid. The big draw was the now demolished building (to 3 bricks high) where the Crown Prince decided to massacre his folks as they didn't approve of his choice of bride - I blame the horrid palace, so ugly it would make anyone nuts. However, it created a vacum which the Maoists rapidly filled. In my view a most unfortunate happening.

There is ONLY ONE POST OFFICE in Kathmandu! what a way to run a coutry that depends heavily on tourists for an income.... it took several goes to even locate it, As for the electricity it is in short suply, ony working between 11pm & 6 am; and yet when the internet does work, it's good. I'm told.

So, I enjoyed various meals in the garden of dreams- which supplied big cushions and mats to lie down on inte sun, just putting them out in the morning. The garden had been created by a member of the Rana family which had effectively deposed the Royal Family for about 100 years (keeping them imprisoned in the palace). This guy was a) very wealthy, b) was instrumental in reistateing the Royalty , c) very well educated (UK school & uni.) and d) an all round good egg. I havn't found out what happened to him, but in the late 50s his garden was abandoned, only to be recently restored by foreign aid. In fact most of the better bits of Nepal seem to have foreign imput, rather sad realy.

He also had cotact with Boris of Kathmandu, born russian, sent by his parents to train in ballet - to avoid the nastier bits of the russian revoution, dancing all over the world - opened the 300 club in India (hugely sucsessful as the first mixed race club), suspected by the US of being an russian agent during WW2 and a crack shot at tiger shoots when rogue elephants & tigers needed eliminating.

Between the 2 of them , they mounted a 3 month trip to USA to collect Stars. Boris was elected as treasurer after he twice mislaid the briefcase containing the expedition funds for the 4 of them , the other 2 were maharajas....... Besides carryig out 'research' in hollywood (that kind of research? it required enormous amouts spent on flowers & petty cash !) ,they went to Detroit to pick up a few cars........ Just as you think what a load of wasters, they did self fianance it all. Also remitances were sent to the widows of the many young pilots who died flying supplies to the Allies over the Himalayas. After the war, when Boris flew into tbe US, he was extensively grilled by the authorities there (still suspected as being an agent), he was amazed at the amount of detail they had on him -and amused that they spent so much wasted effort.

The last two days in Kathmandu, I & another KGH visitor, both of us interested in walking, took a tuk tuk out to the north hills for a bit of a walk. It was good to get out of the stinky hot valley and stretch the legs again. A good day finished with a meal in the garden of dreams as the sun set ahh

Finally tine to move on, and an overnight flight to Beijing for 2+ weeks before the last stop.

2 - MUCH LATER

Sorry for the long delay in gettingon with this. It was very difficult to get a signal in Kathmandu as their electricity was not just lumpy, but non existant during the day,from 6am to 11pm for anything but business.

Kathmandu has gone right down the pan, there seems to be no effective local or state control. The place has an unkempt appearance, poor/non existant road maintainance; indifferent refuse collection ; dust swept aside, only to be kicked around all day; rubbish dumped in any vacant spot; and noise - so much of it. It was lovely to discover The Garden Of Dreams. A small but enchantingly peaceful space enclosed by high walls. And with a very relaxed staff at the restaurants there. I found myself going for a noise detox every few days.

I spent 2 nights before joining an Exodus 2 week tour of Bhutan, then returned for 2 weeks on my own. Exodus had booked us into a 'new' good hotel which was stuffy and reeked of decayed elegance. Together with the general disarray of the town, I was not lookig forward to this.

Entry 1

I just don't get this - suddenly there are millions of copies of the Korea bit. The one that matters is one of the last three starting with "this is a more or less complete copy". Please Bob/Taal could you delete the rogue ones, I'm afraid to do it in case it all goes awol, as the Bhutan section has - so I'm putting that bit in with Kathmandu.

Arriving in Nepal, I felt good to have a visa - the queue was only a dozen people long while the 'get a visa here" one had 400 people in it. However the luggage took two hours to appear!!!!! Outside there was an Exodus sign - with my name on