Upon arriving in Nepal, we quickly had our first adventure and unknowingly discovered what would become a theme of the trip. Getting our visas turned out to be more of a process than anticipated and more of a process than it needed. Since only one of us had the cash to pay for our visas, we needed to tap Mac which required handing our passports over to security to go downstairs only to find a broken Mac machine. Being the resourceful travelers that we are, we discovered another machine just outside of the airport. But that turned out to be broken as well. It was now down to figuring out how much money we had to free some of us who could then go get cash and save the rest of us. Until it was discovered we actually had just enough cash to free all of us. Score. We were free & prayed that there would be a working machine on the outside.
Getting to our hotel, we were greeted with Nepali tea and snacks and were sat down to plan our stay. We worked in a 3 day trek with sight seeing around Kathmandu. Our planner told us that our free day might have to be switched with our day of sightseeing scheduled for the next day since there was a chance of not being able to get a driver and a guide because of the festival. The festival, which involves the olders giving the youngers tikkas for good health, started the first official day of our vacation and lasts for 5 days. Because of the festival, we would soon find no other excuse was needed for why things didn't work (ATMs were a nightmare), why things were closed or why help was sparse. If we wanted to, we could have turned it into a drinking game we heard it so often. The next few blogs might be a bit slow in getting published...because of the festival.
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