Once upon a time in Nepal

Though the main roads and all other sub roads which I had to take to reach kathmandu was not that good and bit of dusty, it didn't take more than a 20 minutes drive. I am in Kathmandu now...

All the way long during the drive, taxi driver was speaking in Hindi and nepali. So I had to discover certain new facial expressions and some moves to convey and communicate with him. Each time when i ask "Do you speak English?" he says "yes"..But that is the only word he spoke in English with me...

Kathmandu is a city which has a unpredictable weather. If you are willing to travel to Nepal during April to July make sure you carry your warm clothes and a handy portable umbrella with you. If you are not from a country which could bare the cold wind its recommended to bring some lip balms to avoid cracked lips.

One more interesting thing in Nepal is, if you wish to ride a motor bike, no need to carry an additional helmet with you. Because, you are permitted to take anyone along with you in the bike without a helmet. Only the rider needs to wear the helmet..

Food in Nepal is quite closer to Indian food. Basically if you go for dinner or lunch you can enjoy what ever the Indian food you wish. Also Nepali food also available. The easiest and the most fast food which I enjoyed there is rotty with chicken Currey. Since Its understood by both parties I was been served that correctly. If you really want potato..ask for "ALU"..

When it comes to Imported and local spirits, apart from whiskey, brandy, gin and vodka..Antiquity whiskey and Spey Livet, Signature are the top selling brands. But the problem is..if there is no person who understand English its hard to find a suitable sandy and a crunchy to have with it. Therefore it is recommended to join a local guy also to your party. They don't drink much.. also they are so nice to hand around with..

Drilling down my roots here in Nepal was not that hard to me. For all travelers who wish to drop you self at Nepal for a week or two, yes you should go with it. 2011 is the year for tourism here in Nepal.

As a traveler it was usual to me to see almost all of the passengers trying to come out of the flight through the just opened door, just like that they were praying to the god on all the way long during the flight not to crash. Mostly they might be in a rush to get customs clearing done quickly. But never mine I'm gonna stay there for 1 month, I was pretty sure that I could get the customs clearing done before than that...

Once I reach the flight door, instead a terminal as i expected,staircase fitted on an indian TATA lorry was waiting to land us. There are no terminals in the air port. All my friends who were trying break the flight door, were waiting in a terminal bus....

The wind went across me was so cold. It was driving me down across the memory lane of Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka. Which is one of the coolest places in Sri Lanka.

Inside of the airport was made of bricks and was so cool without any A/C, arrival lounge was having few counters and I guess visitors from SAARC region are allowed to enter to Nepal free for the first time. All other passport holders have to make payments according to the number of days that they wish to stay. Chargers are shown in a white board written by hand in blue ink. 30 days - 40 USD.

Hinidi and Nepali languages are used by the airport officers and its your talent to communicate with them correctly and get things done.

If you are a non-SAARC passport holder there are 2 applications to be filled at the airport counter. One for the immigration, which is big and have more than enough space to fill your details and the other one is for visa, which has very less amount of space to write in.

Entire visa process is manual. Our details are gone to their CR books. Once the visa is given, you can collect your luggage from the first floor. Customs officer will make sure that you are not taking any others luggage.Once you collect the luggage and pass the customs officer you can exchange your USD or GBP into Nepali ruppess (NPR) also can purchase a sim card on NCELL from the airport for 100 NPR.

After that the next challenge to find the place which you need to go and explain that to the taxi driver in Hindi...