October 25 Kathmandu

My flight arrived at 11:00 PM, and I was relieved to be met at the airport. It was Purba, who I would later discover was our head sherpa. They stuffed me into the back of a beat-up Toyota, and started driving to the hotel. I was exhausted from two days of traveling, but I was also on sensory overload seeing Kathmandu at that first night.

Even at 11:00 there was considerable traffic on the roads. Later I would discover that this was barely a trickle compared to the daytime. It seemed like we traveled on tiny crooked roads, like we were cutting across a series of secret shortcuts. There were many dogs out on the street, knocking down garbage cans and going through the mess. Then I realized that some of the dogs were actually monkeys. There were no traffic lights -- every intersection was a free-for-all. And there were no street signs. You just had to know where you were going.

I was a little concerned that I had not met Wes and Ellen, who I expected to be on my flight, but there was no sign of them in Hong Kong, on the flight, or in the airport. When I arrived at the hotel, I was surprised to hear that everyone else was already there. Wes and Ellen had gotten in the previous day, and everyone else had arrived earlier todayThe hotel sent me up to my room: luckily Paul had not quite gone to bed yet. I said Hi, dropped into bed, and went right to sleep. Finally.

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