Here we go! Or went…

Our amazing RTW ('round the world) trip started on a brisk morning in Helsinki, where we were staying with Tuomas's parents. They took us to the airport where we were joined by Sini's father and brothers who all came to wish us luck on our journey. After the airport security had confiscated our babyfoods, which we took as lunch as we have sometime before, we sat down to contemplate on what was ahead: 7 months of freedom, new experiences and traveling the world!

The first leg of our journey was a short flight to Stockholm, from where we continued on to Doha in Qatar. Doha airport is a hugeish complex, very new, very chic, with lots of spaces to sit down and listen to the continuous "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, the Qatar airways flight…"-announcements. Wishing us good morning at 23.50 was a little odd. It was downright frustrating at 4.00 as we were still waiting for our early morning flight. After the long wait we finally got in the plane for Kathmandu. We arrived on the not-so-grand Kathmandu international airport January 6th at around 11.30. It took us about an hour and a half to get our luggage, which fortunately hadn't been lost on the way, and to get through customs. Luckily we were informed about the need for passport-sized photographs on arrival, as we needed those in addition to some spare dollars, 35 each to be exact.

After we got out of the airport we soon found and older Nepalese gentleman holding a piece of paper with Tuomas's name on it. He showed us to a taxi which was waiting for us and set us on our way to Thamel, the backpacker-ghetto of Kathmandu. We had booked three nights in Trekker's Home-hostel, which turned out to be quite a nice place, though pretty basic. 35 dollars for three night bought us a central location, clean room, en-suite bathroom with hot water and a very nice staff. Granted, the hot water was at first darker than Masala-tea and there seemed to be only one working light in the room. However, after a while the water cleared and the receptionist explained to us that we had to turn on the power to the room from the outside. After those corrections we ended up rating our basic room 4 out of 5. It was a little chilly in there, but that's mostly because of the climate…

We didn't end up seeing that many sights in Kathmandu, as we tried to get some rest on the day of our arrival and the next we spent mostly just wandering the streets. We did see the "Monkey Temple", but we failed to enter the Durbar Square, as they had put a price of 750 rupees (6,17€) per person for apparently just that day, as the living goddess Kumari Devi was due to make one of her few annual appearances on the balcony. However, they only seemed to charge the foreigners, even thought they had prices for others as well. Somehow we weren't able to escape notice and blend in to the crowds of Nepalese people buzzing around us. A similar thing happened as we tried to enter the UNESCO-site of Pashupati temple, we were faced with an entrance fee of 1000 rupees and naturally declined. We might be a little cheap, but we are on a budget here.

The budget thing has been a hassle, but now we have an Excel. Seriously speaking, we haven't decided on how much money we'll be spending on this trip. It seems like an impossible feat to plan such things. So we won't. We're trying to write down what we spend and to figure out ways to live cheaper as we go. We'll see how that goes and change tactics if need be. We did spend some extra on the bus tickets to Pokhara as we chose the more expensive Greenline-company. The eight hour trip was bumpy but felt mostly safe, the driver seemed sane to say the least. The bus itself wasn't that different from the regular tourist busses, but they seemed to pass us a lot more often than we passed them. Slow but safe was our goal, and we achieved that pretty well. The cost of 23 dollars per person was pretty high though so we might opt for the tourist busses on the next trip.

As a conclusion, we are now securely in Pokhara, by the mighty Himalayas. Due to the budget thing we haven't yet reserved any treks, we might end up staying closer to sea level and just do day trips by foot or rented bicycle. We're staying in a cozy hostel which takes us back 10 USD per night. We might have found cheaper ones, but we got a deal on this one, supposedly it could cost three times more! What we'll end up doing here remains a bit of a mystery, but time will tell and so will we, on the next post.