Ever hopeful that James would wake up this morning feeling better, we woke at 5.30am and quickly worked out that sitting on a bus for the next 10 hours was not the best option. I promptly went downstairs and asked Khem to cancel the bus completely - we would need to rethink our options.

The plan had initially been to go to Pokhara and chill for a few days there (3 nights). We were going to meet up with a contact we'd been given by one of James's old customers from work who was hopefully going to set us up on a trek - we were looking at the Poon Hill trek which you can do over 5 days and apparently is nice and easy! We would then spend on more night in Pokhara, travel back to Kathmandu and spend another night here before flying to Delhi around 5th or 6th of October. As we have a flight booked out of India for the 5th December, this would give us 2 full months to explore the north and then have plenty of beach time on the west coast. We can change this flight if we wished, but it would push it into the Christmas rush and the chances of ticket prices increasing is very likely (while our multi-flex pass gives us unlimited changes on all of our tickets, only the fees are waived - if there is a change in the price of the ticket, then we have to pay the extra). So, our dilemma now is whether or not to go to Pokhara on the original plan, this will then take us into the second week of October and, quite frankly, reducing overall beach time! Also, we don't know how long we will be in Delhi before getting a train out to Agra. The booking system for Indian trains seems to be over complicated. We need to book trains on the tourist quota, which from what I can see, can only be done through a travel agent (which will incur a fee, naturally) or at one of the International tourist Bureaus - handy that they have one at Delhi airport! Lah lah lah, you get where I'm going with this I think…obviously when the time comes, we'll let you know how we get on.

So, back to the patient. James now has a cold to match the dodgy tummy.

Time to come up with a new plan we think and unfortunately, maybe leave the long journey to Pokhara to another time. It's a shame really as we were both looking forward to it as we'd heard and read really good things. But alas, we can't do everything. After waking at 5.30 again, James had a few more hours nap time and I set about trying to formulate a plan. As great as it is in our guest house and although Khem has offered us the room for another week, I think we're both beginning to get a bit cabin feverish.

Depending on when James's tummy is better, we might head east to Nagarkot (about 30km) for a few nights where apparently they have amazing views of the Himalayas and on a clear day can see Everest's peak. It's a bit higher up there (2000m as opposed to KTM's 1400m (which incidentally went up by 80cm as a result of the earthquake)) so should be a bit clearer and not as stuffy - hopefully give his cold a chance to clear up. Then head back along the road to Bhaktapur which, although you have to pay $15 to enter the city, is spread over only 6 square kilometres and there are no cars, bikes, scooters or even rickshaws. They also have a Durbar square, but again I think this was significantly damaged. From Bhaktapur, we can just as easily get back to the airport for our flight to Delhi and avoid having to come back to KTM for another night.

I had hoped that we could go the 5km out of town later this afternoon to Patan, this is Nepal's 3rd largest city (1st is KTM, 2nd is Pokhara). Running theme here, is a Durbar square (Durbar square is a generic term used to describe plazas and areas opposite the old royal palaces) but I think I might be pushing my luck there!

All this downtime though is allowing us to hammer through books and probably catch up on some well needed rest (I managed to finish 3 novel in just over a week - not bad going!). It's also given us the chance to get our blog up to date! We're looking forward to some skype sessions with respective parents today, hopefully that will perk things up a bit. Fingers crossed all is well tomorrow and we can back to exploring!

Time to start a new book….