The next couple of days are uneventful
for the most part. The weather is great, we are both feeling
“healthy” and we spend most of the days exploring the Thamel
district, shopping, eating and snoozing. The strike is only on during
the middle of each day. Shops etc are open early in the morning and
then again later in the afternoon. Cars are still not allowed on the
road during the strike period and we find that we can tell if the
strike is on or off when we first wake up—no horns honking means
the strike is still on, horns means its off. True to the media
reports, the strike does only last 3 days.
Most restaurant menus include “diet
coke” but no one every has it in stock so I've managed to find a
new favorite drink—lemon soda. Its basically the juice of one
squeezed lemon topped with club soda. Jam packed with sodium I'm
sure, but who cares...its vacation time. Rick has been sticking to
his Gorkha or Everest beers.
Visiting ATMs has been stressful.
Several times we have used our cards in an ATM (going through the
entire process) only to have the machine shut down, giving out no
money.We've been sticking to strictly bank ATMs so we're confident
that there's no fraud happening, however it seems as though the
transaction process (or the error messaging) is a bit out of whack in
some of these machines. Also we've noticed that many of the ATMs do
not take bank cards, only VISA cards.
Kiran gets back to us and confirms that
Lumbini is off the itinerary and we are now flying to Chitwan instead
of driving. This will bring the total flights on this vacation to 10
flights!!!
We repack our bags yet again and pass
over our extra, non-essential luggage to Kiran who will store it and
deliver it to our new hotel in Kathmandu when we get back from
Chitwan. This service is fantastic for us because we did need to
bring both winter and summer clothes which meant a lot of extra baggage to carry around.
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