Blade goes east – again

Well, I’ve been thinking about this trip for months, with some trepidation and anticipation, across the nation from station to station. See – rapping is easy. Or was that hip hop? I know it wasn’t jungle or garage. Garbage, Basil says.

It started with a kiss, never thought it would come to this. Thanks Errol. God bless you if he, she or it exists. The kiss Errol referred to was a ‘goodbye, will miss you but see you later’ kiss from my missus, before Adam, my Leeds scum son in law, drove me away to the station. He’s a good lad, and really he’s a step up from scum; but Leeds nevertheless. I’d taken from my wallet an old schedule of trains. The chosen one was cancelled but I’d built in sufficient time to my busy schedule not to be concerned.

The flight from Manchester to Qatar was good. The best music selection of any airline I’ve ever been on. Qatar Airways rocks, or is it rock? Full albums of John Mayall, the Killers, Neil Young, Amy Winehouse, Led Zep and Tom Waits.

The connecting flight to Kathmandu was on time and flew across southern Iran and Pakistan. Two hours over bone dry desert, baking in the morning sun. Good job I wasn’t trekking it.

Within the space of a few minutes the landscape transformed from harsh desert to reasonably lush arable farming. This is the transformed land by the way so act suitably surprised at the photo. Say ‘oh my gosh’ or summat. It’s the valley of the Indus River.

Neil Young was on his second album and was asking Southern Man to free his head by the time I got my first glimpse of the Himalayas, surrounded by the monsoon cloud. Absolutely stunning. You need to look hard and look twice because the cloud is a brilliant disguise.

In the sunlight even the monsoon clouds looked fab.

It was raining when we landed in Kathmandu, only 20 hours after I left home. But the visa queue was horrendous and took another hour and a half to get through. Anything more than 30 days was difficult visa-wise and a bit pricey. By chance the day I landed to the day I left was 30 days. Still $50 but that’s ok and necessary. I thought the visa was a month rather than 30 days. That made it tight!

The taxi struggled through the rush hour, a mad cacophony of bikes, scooters, mobikes, taxis and trucks, randomly appearing from every angle. The noise of hooting was deafening. Eventually we arrived at the hotel, a basic but decent place in the middle of the tourist area of Thamel. I dived into my shower and emerged cleansed. Well, physically anyway.

I remembered these streets and walked to a courtyard covered against the rain, not too far away from the hotel.

Tandoori chicken and mashed potato Nepal style, with Gorkha beer. Heavenly.

…the innocent sleep.

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath.

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Night night.