As our visas were going to take a week to come through, I thought it would be a good idea to try and escape Kathmandu for a few days and suggested we head down to Chitwan national park for a bit of break from the hustle, bustle and pollution. Having had our fill of cities around Europe, we thought it might give us the chance to unwind a little so set about making plans. We managed to change our booking from 7 nights to 3, with the promise of coming back to stay for another 3 nights when we came back to pick up the visas. Khem (the owner of Elbrus Home) was more than happy and even helped us to book our bus down there.

After the formalities were sorted out, we opted to take a cycle rickshaw to the Monkey Temple (it was a really hot day and we knew we had a big climb when we got there!). After a bit of an unsure start - the rickshaw had dropped us off at the end of essentially a little lane…so armed with the map we tentatively started walking up it…we stopped to consult said map and luckily spotted a fellow 'goro' who upon seeing our confused faces, simply said - 'keep on walking straight'…Thanks! So off we went up the dustiest road eventually coming to the foot of the 'mountain' … 320 of the steepest steps known to man-kind (slight exaggeration!) and a lot of sweating, huffing and puffing later, we made it to the top…and what a view. 360 degree view of Kathmandu and the surrounding hills - exactly the reason we went there. Given the name of 'Monkey Temple' there seemed to be a shortage of monkeys at the top, nevertheless, we wandered around and I managed to pick up my first purchase - a lovely silver bangle.

After a few snaps, we descended back towards the city, picking up a taxi on the way. After showing him on the map where we wanted to get to, we haggled on price and got him down to a sensible fare of 200 NPR…only he took us to the wrong place and wasn't entirely pleased at having to honour that price after having to take the long way round to where we actually wanted to be. Our next stop was the Garden of Dreams - apparently a nice little oasis in the madness of the city. As it's us, we naturally went in the wrong direction only to find that the garden was basically where we'd been dropped off in the first place - oops! As with most things, the tourist price is considerably more than the local, but still to us with the exchange rate, not too bad. It was worth it though, beautiful and green with plants and trees. A great little place to hang out and have a rest in the sunshine…if only we'd been more prepared and picked up some lunch! We didn't stay too long but earmarked it for a place to come back to when we returned in a few days time. While we were there though, we got chatting to a nice man from Syria (currently working in Doha) who was off to do a 12 day trek, we talked for a while about travelling and working and went our separate ways wishing each other luck. Both rather hungry, we headed back to the guest house stopping off for some lunch on the way - a plate of momos (pork ones for a change) and some noodle soup then back to chill out for a while.

After a non-descript dinner of dhal and momos (again, James!) we tried to bed down for an early night, ready to face our first Nepalese bus experience the next day….sleep was not very forthcoming…