Well another year over and a new one just begun - I'm sure I've heard that somewhere before! Anyway, a fairly entertaining festive season was had by all, albeit in a low key sort of way. December started with a lighting the Xmas tree party which was good fun even with the rather obscure Jewish/Australian charades contributed by Leonie. This was followed by Carols at the embassy which was much the same as lest year apart from better singing but less mince pies! Then a leaving celebration for Simon and Laura at VSO with full Newari celebration dinner which was supposed to be eaten with fingers but I unsportingly sneaked some spoons out of the kitchen so Mandy, Orla and I didn't have to join in with that. G happily participated as always but then he can shovel the food in properly without making a complete mess so it's easy for him. The final event was an anti-Christmas activity at Leonie's - for the last day of Hanneke festival. That was interesting and more good food but partly scuppered by the Maoists who stopped half the guests getting there. In fact Bandha, strikes and blockades have been rather a festive fixture this year - having the same sort of effect as the snow in Europe I think!

Weather here is cold, cold, cold - so much so that I am reduced to having to go for a run to get hot enough to be able to bear to have a shower and wash my hair! Roll on 1st of February and heat in Thailand!

For Xmas itself we made for Chitwan where it was a,little warmer than KTM, at least inside the buildings, though at 7am in the fog on the back of an elephant it didn't really feel that much warmer as the water dripped off the trees and down our necks! But by 11am the sun would come through and it was lovely and warm while at night we all sat round a big bonfire and ate lots of mince pies, stollen and other festive goodies contributed by various absent friends and sang Christmas songs badly to annoy the other guests! So while very different it still felt pretty Christmassy!We were pretty lucky with the animal sightings - no tigers unfortunately but 3 different rhinos, loads of crocs and lots of fantastic birds. Gordon did the full elephant washing thing where you go into the river on its back and try to stay on. He wasn't that entertaining as he was remarkably good at it and only fell off once but everyone else was very amusing, especially for all the locals who were there washing their clothes. We were there during the elephant festival when there are races and elephant football but unfortunately we managed to catch the speeches but none of the action. Typical!

But despite how nice it was there we've decided to never go back to Chitwan as yet again we were unable to fly back to KTM. With Alison it was due to heavy rain but this time it was just fog. But at least the journey was a bit less exciting than last time with no landslides or traffic jams and so considerably shorter!

New year was pretty quiet, just round at Orla's with lots more yummy food and far too much wine - well 3 for the price of 2 you know! - and then to a local bar to see in midnight though we had the usual Nepali palaver of not quite knowing what time it is! But we did manage to get back into our flat despite being out the latest we've ever been here - all of 1.30am - exciting stuff!

So the countdown to leaving is well under way and plans for our return trip are almost complete. We haven't made any particular resolutions for 2010 but I think it is basically just to get back to the UK and rebuild nice lives for ourselves there - shouldn't be too hard should it?