Just arrived in Kathmandu after 5 days travelling.

The 56 hour train journey wasn't the best experience of my life, we were fortunate to be in the same compartment as a mother and her new baby. So it cried all day and all night, was sick everywhere, and she put the used nappies in a bag under her bed... The views when we got to Tibet however were unbelievable.

We arrives in Lhasa and stayed in a hostel for the night. We walked around the main (and only) square and had Yak Steak for dinner. It is amazing the police presence in Lhasa. As it is run by the Chinese, dozens of soldiers marching up and down the squares, round and round all armed with machine guns. Police on roof tops watching everything. Yet it is the most un-threatening place i have ever been to! Just filled with monks walking round the temple with prayer wheels. That night i got food poisoning so was up all night being sick, yet more illness!

The next day we had a very long 12 hour drive. The views were just unbelievable though so i didn't even care. I wish you all could've seen the mountains. They were just like nothing i;ve ever seen. Watching the sunrise and set over the himalayas is something i won't forget in a long time! We got up to 5,500 Metres. Then i got altitude sickness! It really is getting ridiculous how un lucky i am! So i haven't eaten in 2 days. Literally wasting away! However i could breathe okay after they gave me an oxygen cylinder to breathe with.

We stayed at the most basic hostel i have ever seen that night. It was absolutely freezing, being so high up and so windy. We pushed our beds together, put on all our clothes and huddled together for bodywarmth that night. It snowed all night and the windows weren't fitted properly, so there was such a terrible draft.

That takes me to this morning. We drove to the Nepalese border, we should've been able to see Everest from the road however it was too cloudy unfortunately. However it really didn't bother us as the views were so amazing.

We arrived in Nepal this afternoon and are now in Kathmandu. We already love the city with its snake charmers, tiger balm sellers and sporadic power cuts. The city can't create enough power to cover the entire city at once, so sections of the city have the power cut for 4 hours at a time everyday. I found out the hard way this evening... My hair has gotten very long and so we went into a barbers. he turned on the razor and just as he had started the very first shave the whole place went dark! Unfortunately he had already taken a huge chunk out of my hair, fortunately the razor's power was cut along with the lights so he couldn't do too much damage. They pulled out a generator and by the light of one lightbulb he (more or less) evened up my hair!

We are meeting jenny tomorrow and i am very excited about all the things we are yet to do in Kathmandu! Monkey temples, treks, white water rafting and of course the 160m bungee jump off a rope bridge into a gorge!