Shopping in Thamel Having honed my bargaining skills in China I was all set to hit the shops in Thamel and go on a pashmina buying binge. Much to my despair, however, Nepali shopkeepers - at least in Thamel - do not entertain much of a bargaining conversation. Or, at least, the style is very different to China and I haven't quite figured it out yet. In China, you're given a price which you know is inflated by at least a factor of 8, so you offer 10% of th...

GOAT WATCH 2009 The first day of the Dashain festival approaches and this is like Nepali Christmas over the course of more than a week. A main feature of this is that goats are sacrificed in squares across the country - Durbar Square in Kathmandu of course being the main centre of action. Goats across the country are living on borrowed time, nervously clearing their throats as they imagine the ritual slitting that approaches. The government promised 6500 go...

My week of doing nothing in Kathmandu And I mean...nothing. Nada. After our first night in Kathmandu, in which we walked around overstimulated by the freedom of information around us, I reckoned a good couple of days of doing nothing were in order. The gardens of the hostel were perfect for sitting around having a chat and drinking masala chai for hours on end. The Thamel region has a bookstore every other shop - as if they knew we were coming and that w...

I'm in Kathmandu! Freedom! Non-censored publications! English language! No umbrella-toting! Supermarkets without shrink-wrapped chicken feet! Dalai Lama's photo! I am positively hyperventilating at the prospect of non-censored non-Chinese stimulus around me. Heather & I are acting as if we just got out of prison. I nearly wept at one of the 10,000 English-language bookstores around here that had something other than Chinese propaganda (and ohhh...