Nepal Arrival

After an hour and a half flight from Delhi to Kathmandu, we arrived safely. We had to purchase a visa at the customs and I had get a local to take a visa photo of me. After a $5 picture, $25 for the visa, and about half hour of immigration inefficiencies we arrived in Nepal. It was now around 11pm and there was no one there to pick us up. Soon we surrounded by people "taxi", "taxi." It was incessant. "No, I have someone picking me up." "Okay!" But they keep hanging around like flies to a turd. When I don't find my limousine service, they ask me, "Do you have a phone number?" I do and pull out my piece of paper with many numbers on it. The Nepal number for Noel, that Nathan gave me, ended up being Noel's old number and I ended up disturbing some poor fellows sleep. So eventually, after a number of passes of people holding up signs, I concede to a taxi ride to a hotel. I eventually see the sign that was on display earlier for me, it said, "George Asker Vineyard."

We shoe horn in our two backpacks into the back of the taxi and off we go, only to quickly stop after the driver had a brief cell phone chat. "Sir, do you mind? I have my brother's helmet here."After a few minutes, the helmet gets passed through the window and off to the hotel we are." The taxi driver asked, "How much you want to spend sir?" "$10", I replied. "$10!...sir, you don't want a nice hotel?", stated a concerned voice, "Yes", I reassured him, "A $10 hotel please." "How about internet sir?" "Yes, I need internet." "That will cost $20." I agreed to the $20 hotel idea and soon, after a few interesting short cuts, ("we only take these at night sir") we are at our destination.

Our hotel is nicer than the last one (it should be for $20 vs. $13.) This one has luke warm water and a towel. Both places you don`t get toilet paper either. When we arrive, our window is wide open, the temperature outside is 5C and there is no heater either. The walls are all concrete and the placed is not going to warm up. It is colder here and the temperature goes down closer to zero. I ask if they have a power adaptor for my computer, after a puzzled look, they open a drawer and I follow them upstairs to where he shoves 2 wires into the socket from a power bar. That works for me so now I am working on my blog and email...till everything goes black.

In the morning I am putting on my long-johns, my down jacket and another extra layer. The I jump in my down filled -6C sleeping bag. I now kind of wished I would have brought my -20 bag instead. The electricity is off from 3am till 9am so I am sitting in the dark, watching my breath, with all my layers, and in my sleeping bag writing this blog. The trick is to breath in a way so my glasses don`t fog up.

Now the problem is figure out how we are going to connect with the Kathmandu Vineyard. I wrote an email to Nathan Rieger and Noel before the electricity went out but in the morning, I discovered that it never sent. I finally was able to send it and then I look on line for the church's address. The closest address I can come up with was "Lalitpu Sub-Metropolitan City."

We eventually pack up and mosey on downstairs to pay our $20 hotel bill. I ask the owner where I can exchange money and he asks how much I want to exchange. I tell him $100 and he pulls out a calculator and tells me he will give me 8,100 Nepalese rupees for $20. I hand him over 5 bills. He looks at them and asks me to give him something larger like a $100 bill. I tell him I only have $20s and he tells me the rate has gone down. He can only give me rs 8,000. So I say, "Fine" and we make the exchange. Upon inspecting the 5 bills, one is a wee bit tattered so he asks me to exchange it, which I do. Then the front desk worker hands me the $20 bill, I gave earlier, for a "nicer" looking bill, so I exchange that one too.

I asked the owner where Lalitpur was and he said about 7km away. So I asked him to find me a taxi, which he did for rs 500 ($6). We jumped in and started driving through a crazy maze of steets about 10ft wide between the buildings. Most of the streets were just dirt. People, bikes, animals were all being dodged. I am not sure if they use their horn to get thier money's worth or if they think it actually helps but every one participates. We eventually fly out of the maze to a resemblance of a normal road and then battle lots of "cut you off" rush hour. We then escape the throngs of cars and head up a steep hill, careening around the corner. Oh yeah, when you go around the corner of which you can't see what's coming...you honk the horn. Several cars approach us on this one lane ally and somehow everyone seems to squeeze by and keep the paint on their fenders.

We eventually see a sign "Assumption Catholic Church" and he assumed since we were looking for the "Kathmandu Vineyard Church" that this must be the place. He parks the car in the middle of the street, knocks on the door and enters in. After 5 minutes, I follow and they are busy with the phone directory and cell phones trying to locate the place. They ask me for a number. I get the bright idea that maybe I copied it down wrong from an email (my wife has accused me of that but it has never been proven in a court of law). So I open my computer, find Nathan's email and voila... I did copy it correctly. I think, "I wonder if there is wireless here?" Sure enough, I find an unsecure wireless connection and download my email. There is one from Noel.
Noel wrote: "Hey wher r u . Raju waited sux hours at the aiport for u n way call me at 9840052359 or raju at 9841469958 noel". So now I have a phone number, sitting in the receiving area of Assumption Catholic church. We call the number and Noel tells the taxi man to drop us off at the basket ball court. Within 10 minutes, Raju arrives at the court and 4 minutes later we arrive at our long awaited destination.

Raju Rana is the senior pastor of the Kathmandu Vineyard and we are warmly greeted by several people. The church owns a compound which houses the church and several other people. We are then escorted to our room. The rooms are very nice and sport 2 single beds that afford me the luxury to be able to stretch out and not have my feet hang over the end. We also have a coffee table.


Our room contains no en-suite bathroom but does possess a squatty down the hall. In case you are not familiar with a squatty potti, it is a basically a hole in the floor. What ever bathroom business that commands you to sit and take care of at home, here you squat and take aim. There is no toilet paper at most Asian bathrooms. In its place is the bucket. You use it to splash yourself off and to rinse your hand after you finish. In North America, no job is complete until the paper work is done. In most Asian countries, they don't worry about the paperwork. The bucket also serves as a flushing device. It is better to moisten the edges of the hole so that your business has less chance of sticking. The proper way is to hold the bucket with your right hand and use you left hand to cleanse. (This is why in some countries, people don't shake hands or eat with their left hands.) By the way, this is a nice squatty. I have seen a few that is only a hole in the floor with two foot prints painted on the floor straddling the hole.

We do have a shower with hot water. You can see the hot water heater in this picture. I find it interesting how the plug is just in the open where the water flows. In North America, the voltage is only 120V (vs. 200V in most parts of the world) and they demand ground fault protectors where any electrical device is within 1 meter of water.

Our room has no heater in it and I think that is the way it is going to be until we hit Siliguru India. Where we are headed for next, is between 2,000-3,000 meters (7-10,000 feet) and had 4' of snow last week. I do think that with the door shut, our room temperature is rising from body heat and computer heat.

We had our first Nepal meal of Noodles, and it was very tasty. We also had noodle soup with pieces of fried egg and Nepal rice with mutton.

Church is on tomorrow (Saturday) at 11am and so it is 1am now and time to go to bed.