Thank you, dear readers

I've really enjoyed doing this blog, posting pictures and writing of our travel adventures. So thank you, dear reader, for your comments back to me as it was grand to know you've been tuning in.  X

Home sweet home - minus luggage

We're home! Safe and sound. Our luggage however is still in London because Delhi airport decided to close for an hour to practice for this weeks national celebrations, which had a knock on effect with our travel plans.

The flight from Kathmandu to Delhi was delayed, and we were circling above Delhi in the fog waiting to land for an hour, thinking that we were going to miss the London flight. The transfer desk (avoid it if you can, it is a lesson in inefficiency) eventually gave us our forward boarding cards for London and also the hop up to Manchester. Luckily the London flight was delayed as well so we only just had time to get it. However 'going through security' segregates men and women, so I didn't know if Bern had made it through at the same time as me, so I waited and watched the 'male' queue looking for him. He had made it through quickly hooray, and so a quick trot to the departure gate and onto the plane. 

The London flight with Virgin Atlantic was actually great because of our extra legroom seats and also because the plane was new. Made a nice change after all the manky transport we've been used to. 

Flying over Pakistan and Afghanistan in the day meant you could see their mountains and goodness me they were beautiful covered in snow. Absolutely stunning.  Getting into London was also good as you could pick out landmarks. We got off the plane, and we were singled out by ground crew with new tickets for a later flight to Manchester as we had missed our scheduled one. I was chuckling to myself, thinking goodness these guys are good, how do they know to pick us out, then I looked around and thought actually it's very simple as we were pretty much the only white faces on the plane! 

So off we trot to Teminal 5 as Virgin put us on a BA flight. Another transfer desk for new boarding cards but - oh what - the desk staff told us that the gate had already closed for that flight! We got the boarding cards anyway and were told to run as they would try their best to keep the gate open for us. 

Sprint sprint sprint through T5 - like you see in the movies except with much less grace and style - escalator steps two at a time - excuse me excuse me - am I a magnet for stupid people - then to the gate to see, hooray hooray, we could still get on. Thank you, BA!

And so, 45 minutes up to Manchester for the last flight of the journey. We were sure that our luggage hadn't made it with us after all the kerfuffle at Heathrow, and sure enough it hadn't. One piece was back in T1, the other in T5 and the third was in transit between the two! A courier will deliver it hopefully Sunday, maybe Monday. So no hair dryer or toilet bag until then but I will survive! 

Very tired on the way home in the car and we swapped driving duties 3 times to help each other. Home to a cold house but I didn't notice as I zonked out straight away. Good to be home.

Kathmandu day 6 - lets gan yam

Home today, or 'gan yam' in Cumbrian dialect. Great food again in Yang Ling Tibetan restaurant with our friends last night, and I will miss not having momos for another year. 

I hope that our journey goes without a hitch and we will be back in the land of wet and cold before we know it. X

A little samey - sorry!

Just reading these last few posts and I'm aware dear reader that they are quite samey, we get up, we go shopping, we have lunch, we do more shopping then we go out for dinner! No sightseeing or anything that's a lot of fun. We did when we first visited but now we didn't give ourselves a lot of time to do anything but work! Next year I'd like to do a trek, it's just organising everything at home so we can be away for a longer period. 

But for now, here's a photo of a rickshaw!

Kathmandu day 5

Madly rushing around trying to complete our orders today, and also going to see our trekking guide friend at his home for lunch. We met his son and daughter, and they fed us dal bhat (lentil curry) with rice, plus two other vegetable side dishes of spring greens, broccoli and tomatoes. There was also a very spicy pickle made from tomatoes, garlic and chilli which was delicious but I had to have it in small bits! It was great to have home cooked food rather than the usual restaurant fare. 

I wanted to show you some of the things we've been buying - I really like the dragons! They are wooden and are an opposite pair. We sell quite a few of the singing bowls which are played for meditation but the price of metal and also shipping per kilo keeps going up so it's sometimes tough to know how much to buy. 

Sock update .....

I finished the original sock after making it smaller, but then I thought that I could try a new design, something a little prettier perhaps.

This has front posts and clusters! Ooooh get me. 

Some city views

Went up onto the hotel roof to get some sun and see how the view was. Some days it's very smoggy but today wasn't too bad. There are a few pretty roof gardens amongst the concrete nightmare!