We arrived back into Kathmandu on Tuesday morning. I'm sure as we got off the bus and walked through the garden restaurant where everyone was having breakfast, they were recoiling in horror at the state and smell of us. We were greeted by Danielle who had come out of hospital a few days earlier. She was looking so well compared to the last time we'd seen her. We dumped our bags in the room (5th floor - have I not had enough of climbing?) and Karen and I headed out for breakfast. It was the cheapest meal we'd had in 2 weeks as they charge a premium for everything up in the mountains. So, we splashed out and had a fresh juice too. Just because we could!

We then had our long awaited limitless hot water showers. I still didn't feel clean but it was bliss to be warm and feel the water!! After a couple of hours of not a lot, Karen and I went for lunch and a few cocktails. I had a Greek salad. It's pretty much the first veggies I've had in 2 weeks and it tasted so good! So fresh. I then went back to my hotel as I'd checked into a different place (marginally better at a cheaper price - still on the bloody 5th floor with no lift though!!). I opened my bag and it exploded all over the room. It was hard to know what was clean (very little) and what needed to be sealed in a nuclear waste bag. That was so exhausting that I had to have a lie down.

We had a group farewell dinner that night. I was so tired I just wasn't feeling it but again, it as nice to have fresh food - and some wine! After a few drinks with everyone, Karen and I went for a final cocktail in a sort of treehouse bar. Then I was beat. Dropped her off enroute then had to walk to my hotel, which was only 5 minutes further down the same road but the further I walked the darker it got and the more people hassled me for a taxi. After my mountain climb up 5 flights of stairs I was finally in bed, a proper bed and I slept like a baby!

On Wednesday I had no plans. I woke up and my cough had finally loosened which made me feel much better. It's still there but I can at least breathe. Bhim had panicked me a bit the previous night as he said he wanted to take me to the hospital to get it checked out as I'd had it for so long. I think just being back at a sensible altitude has helped enormously and the antibiotics have finally kicked in. After breakfast I went back to bed and watched the Lion King and then the Bourne Legacy came on. It was just at a nail biting, crucial moment when the electricity cut out. Nooooo!! This is common in Kathmandu as they do load shedding which is where they cut the power off at certain times of the day. That's all very well except they cut the power off between 3-8am so the fans go off and you nearly suffocate in your sleep!

I left the hotel at 2pm (very lazy morning!) and walked through the bazaar to the Garden of Dreams. This is a walled garden and is an enclave of serenity amidst the hustle, bustle and unbearable dust outside. There were people lazing on the grass, chilling by the various ponds and eating in the cafe and bar. All very peaceful and civilised. Once back outside I decided to try and find the shopping mall that Karen had gone to the previous day but I think I misheard her directions and I ended up on a long trek through sh!tsville. There were people begging everywhere and it was even dustier and dirtier than Thamel where I'd spent all of my time up to that point. I finally gave up and headed home, deciding to see if I could spot anyone from our group. I found a couple of the guys. Oh wait, I'm not allowed to say that. Rewind. I found Yoon and Mark and they were planning to go to Bodhnath Stupa for sunset so I decided to tag along. There were 6 of us and we negotiated 2 taxis. It was like the fast and the furious, tearing along the streets of Kathmandu, barely missing people and squeezing through impossibly small gaps. It was like the double decker bus in Harry Potter. The stupa was pretty impressive. It's the largest stupa in Asia and is the focal point for many devotees. There were a lot of people praying in a way I've never seen before. I don't know what it's called but they had sort of wooden beds and they would clasp their hands together and pray, before kneeling down, putting their hands on some kind of mittens and pushing themselves down into a lying position, before standing up again and repeating. This they apparently do at least 108 times. We found a rooftop restaurant which had a great view of the stupa and had some dinner and a few drinks before our crazy taxi ride back. Now it was dark and was even more wild, especially as there were no lights inside the car on the dashboard. The driver almost knocked several people over and slammed on his breaks so many times that I thought I was going to fly through the windscreen!

I got back to my hotel at around 8pm and fell in and out of consciousness as I tried to watch TV. It's all finally catching up on me.

On Thursday I met up with Katrina for a girly day. We went for a great pizza lunch, a few drinks, some shopping, a banana and chocolate crepe and coffee, some more shopping and some more drinks! The weather was a bit iffy and early evening it just bucketed down. We had heard that there was a monsoon coming. Here it came! We met everyone else that was still in Kathmandu and waded through the puddles to a place called Rum Doodle for dinner. It's traditionally where people meet after their expeditions and compare notes. There are big paper feet everywhere with people's stories and there are signatures from Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Sherpa, Rob Hall, Chris Bonnington etc.

I said my farewells to David, Katrina and Frida and then spent most of the night awake due to the huge claps of thunder and fork lightning. Tomorrow will be fun! I'm meant to be sightseeing all day!

On Friday morning I met up with Emma who was part of a parallel trekking group. We went to Pasupatinath which is Nepal's most important Hindu temple. We knew we weren't allowed to go inside the temple but even finding it was a challenge. It was pouring with rain and there were signs for shoe changes but I knew that none of our group would have taken their shoes off and wandered the streets in bare feet so we went through a kind of security checkpoint where a guard kept talking to us in Nepali (no clue!). Just kept smiling and saying "namaste" and we walked through. We then came across an old people's home so wandered in there. What a horrendous place to spend your last years. So sad. We finally found the official entrance where we had to pay $10 because it is apparently a world heritage site (don't get me started on world heritage sites. It's a free pass to charge the earth). Then came the shocking part. This is basically the equivalent of Varanasi and the filthy Bagmati River is considered holy. So much so that people come from all over Nepal to be cremated here. We saw the ashes of what had evidently been a body and it was all a bit alien. I then spotted a body wrapped in a pink sheet. It was just lying there being ignored except every so often someone would expose the head and then cover it up again. At around midday there was a flurry of activity. About 4 or 5 bodies were carried down to the river. They were all wrapped up in white shrouds with coloured shawls over them. They were carried on sort of makeshift wooden ladders. The bodies were tilted towards the river and their feet were washed. I was directly opposite one of them and his head was uncovered as they washed his feet and legs. The bodies were then wrapped up again, covered with flowers and carried to individual stone platforms on the edge of the river which had sort of wooden cradles on them. The bodies were rotated around the cradles several times and then placed on top. One family member then came with a flaming torch and set fire to the head. I could see the person's hair. They put more wood on the side of the body and what looked like firelighters inside. The smoke was pluming. It was all very intense. It was difficult to know who was who in the whole proceedings as nobody was outwardly grieving, people were dressed in jeans and T-shirts and everyone was just milling around. We stood for around 10 minutes and then decided we'd had enough, even though I had some kind of weird morbid fascination with what was going on. As we left the river, we could see a number of fires burning. As if a sign from above, the sun then came up and we negotiated a taxi to Patan where Durbar Square is apparently home to the finest collection of temples and palaces in Nepal. It was pretty impressive. The buildings were ancient, some of them dating back to 250BC. We had a wander, fought off people trying to be our guide and then found a rooftop restaurant for lunch. Very civilised.

After nodding off in the cab home, I had a nana nap back at my hotel and then met the last remaining stragglers from our group for dinner. There were only 5 of us left. We also found out that after we flew back from Lukla, no flights have left so people have been stranded up in the mountains. We were so lucky with the weather and it seems that Chomolungma was definitely keeping an eye out for us. The monsoons are coming and I can't think of anything worse than doing that 12 day trek in the rain, slipping and sliding, being cold AND wet and never being able to dry anything. It would have been a death sentence! I guess that also means that people are stuck in Kathmandu, unable to get to the mountains either. Nightmare. Imagine getting all the way here and having to spend 2 weeks in the hole that is Kathmandu!!

So, as I try and come to terms with and process what I've done, I'll leave you with a few tips in case you are also thinking of conquering the bottom of the top of the world!

- You can't train for altitude and it affects everyone differently but I strongly believe that if you exercise your heart to its full capacity every day for at least 2-3 months, you'll be in good shape. I don't think I exercised my heart enough although I had no muscle pain or stiffness so was definitely physically fit enough.

- Good boots are the most important piece of equipment. Don't underestimate how much you'll be wearing them. I felt like I was walking in my slippers and talcum powder in the socks morning and night stops your feet shrivelling and protects against blisters.

- Carry medication for coughs and colds and some kind of tiger balm, Vicks or similar. Buy your medication in Kathmandu. You can buy a course of antibiotics for a few $. There are WHO approved pharmacies so it's all above board!

- I can't praise the effectiveness of merino wool enough. It's magic material. I wore the same top layers for pretty much the whole trek and not a whiff.

- Gloves. I thought mine would be warm enough. I'm not sure if anything would combat the cold of Kala Pattar but don't skimp on the quality.

- Paw paw ointment. Was a saviour for split lips and crusty noses!

- Money. Things are much more expensive than the guidebooks and the guides will tell you. You will easily spend at least $25-30 a day in the mountains and that's not buying anything extravagant. That's 3 meals a day, the odd chocolate bar, pots of tea and charging/shower charges. Most of us took around $500 up the mountains and ran out. Costs are multiples of Kathmandu prices.

So, that's all folks! I'm excited to get home and get properly clean and looking forward to the reunion with my baby Harry. I just hope he remembers me!

Namaste.......

(PS Photos will be uploaded in next couple of days: www.picasaweb.google.com/lindylou73)