August 25 - Tibet: Gangkor to Kathmandu, Nepal

We woke up early for our 10:00AM flight, and met the group out front at 8:00AM.  We walked across the driveway to the airport and waited to clear our various security checks.  Jon and I thought we would be charged for overweight backpacks greater than 20kg, but mine was 19.5kg and Jon's was 22.5kg.  Of course, we left some things at the Hotel Harati in Kathmandu before we left, so we still have some lightening up to do before we leave for China.

The flight was pretty uneventful.  We passed by Mt. Everest again, but we were on the wrong side of the plane to see it.  We arrived in Kathmandu at 11:30, but with the time change it was really 8:45AM.  So we were hungry for lunch but of course it was breakfast time.  

We checked into the Hotel Harati, waited for Laura and Mark to finish FAFFING, and then went to lunch and to do some shopping.  We took them to the company with which we'd arranged to go white water rafting, and they signed up as well.  Then we went to the Northfield Cafe for lunch and scrumptious Smoothies.  We laughed because Mark kept crowding Laura's "table space" which resulted in her blowing on his arm until he moved away.  This finally escalated to him counting the number of squares on the tablecloth to determine if he was using his allotted space or not.  These two are such a riot, and keep us constantly entertained.  It feels like we've been friends with them forever!

The Last Dinner

At 6:30, we met the group in the hotel lobby for our last supper together.  Kath took us to a restaurant called "Typical Nepali Restaurant" where we sat in a little room upstairs which they had reserved for us.  It was very cute, the windows were open, and incense was burning on the windowsill.  The waiters passed out these little clay bowls about the size of the palm of my hand which they filled with "Nepali Wine".  Jon thought it smelled like tequila, but it tasted more like whiskey and burned a path straight to our stomachs.  Jon had enough after one sip, but I found that it grew on me after I finished my shot so I had his as well.  Many of the group had a few other shots in addition to ordering Lhasa Beers so we were a very merry party.  We gave our gifts to Kath and toasted her (and ourselves) and enjoyed our dinners.

The Group in our little room for dinner.  

The room was so small that I had to hang out the window just to snap this photo!

When dinner was over, the waiters came up with a lute and one of the young boys danced for us while the waiters sang.  It was very cute!  Laura - who fell in love with the little clay shot/pots - began stacking them all on the table.  It was clear that we were all exhausted, but no one wanted to leave because this was the last time we'd be together.  Finally, we had to get up and go because Lhasa had an evening flight to catch and we all wanted to see her off, so together we walked back to the hotel.

After saying our good-byes to Lhasa, we went to Kath's room and hung out for an hour or so.  But, since we were still on Tibet time, we were very tired.  I turned in around 11:00 (which is 2:30AM Tibet time) and crashed.