A quickie

We only had to wait eight hours for our flight to Kathmandu, Amanda blamed me only about nine times for not telling her about the airline's poor record, we had a great in-flight meal, the wing did not fall off and we got to our very nice $8 hotel at 4am. All's good.

Kathmandu is a real gringo breakfast heaven - banana pancakes, muesli, curd and fruit to die for and PROPER coffee. But it is also beautiful, with great local food, very friendly people (if slightly desperate to sell their wares), amazingly interesting little alleyways, impressive Durbar (palace) complex and even more intriguing ones in the outlying villages.

Can't for love nor rupees upload any photographs in the internet cafe, so it will have to wait until we're back in India.

Tomorrow we head to Tibet in a Jeep with a two Spaniards and a couple of Israelis. We're slightly concerned about altitude sickness - we're at 1,300m in Kathmandu, but rise within a couple of days to close to 6,000m. Remain hopeful that our experience in the Andes counts for something.

The trip to Lhasa (Tibetan capital) takes five days, and the Chinese are massively uptight about visas and the like (coming from Nepal), but we've managed to arrange a separate 'permit' which will allow us to leave the tour group and go off independently - but only for 21 days. On the way back we'll try to stop off at Everest base camp.

It's been raining non-stop for more than two days - and we're both wet down to our undies, grumpy and hungry. So it's over and out for a while.