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We decided to stay in Thamel in Kathmandu. This is the busy touristy area. Thamel was pretty much as expected. Busy narrow bustling streets heaving with advertisements of every shape, size and colour advertising all sorts of shops and restaurants etc. Not unlike the main bazaar in Delhi just MUCH much cleaner and more organised. It was also much cooler here with rain on and off during our stay. Pretty similar to the UK.
We had our first KFC since leaving the UK which Tom was very excited about and had already been looking forward to for a while! This area was more developed than we were used to. So many places to eat to choose from as well as hundreds of little shops. We found a mini supermarket, an actual supermarket! It's quite sad that on the rare occasions we come across a normal shop or supermarket we love to spend time having a look around. “OMG they have Cadbury's fingers, Walkers shortbread, Twining's AND Marmite!” Reminds us of home I think :). Had to buy some Marmite and Twinings this time though! Breakfast in India can get a bit samey, Marmite was definitely required. As much as I like chai tea it can also get a bit much as it's so sweet and you can rarely get hold of just normal english tea. I was missing it too much!
We decided we'd spend a morning doing the lonely planet two hour walking tour from Thamel to Durbhar Square in the old city. It was quite good and ended up being more like a treasure hunt to find the various carved wooden window frames, temples and statues, some down hidden alley ways etc that you would never have spotted otherwise. Durbhar Square was slightly more complicated. We had a map given to us with our very expensive ticket into the square as well as a map in our lonely planet. Neither of which matched up too well with the buildings in the square. There were around 46 different temples, statues and shrines in the small square and after 20 minutes we realised it was futile or it would take a very very long time at least to match up all these points of interest with the info on our maps. We decided to just wonder around and if something took our interest we'd look it up if we could. Most of the architecture in the square dated back to the 17th and 18th centuries with many original buildings much older. Given the site is a Unesco World Heritage Site it was disappointing to see the area crawling with so many people, rubbish, taxis and rickshaws. Not sure why cars were even allowed through the square, they just added to the noise and general crowded feel. There were fruit, veg and souvenir sellers everywhere using parts of some of the buildings as platforms to sell their goods. This always means more rubbish too. Plus there were SO many pigeons encouraged by people selling seeds which meant all the lovely buildings were just covered in pigeon poop. Some dating back to the 15th century. A terrible shame. It was certainly an interesting place to be but would have liked to know more about the buildings had we known which was which!
As we were only staying in Kathmandu for a couple of days we spent the remainder trying out different restaurants (making the most of it before heading back to India!) and wandering around the shops and buying a few things. We stocked up on food to keep us going during our long 14 hour bus ride to the border at Kakarbhitta, where we'd re-enter India. Cheese triangles, crackers, bread rolls, crisps, sultanas, chocolate bars, biscuits and cake. Food fit for a king! Also finally got around to buying some Yak cheese. Unbelievable. Can't believe we nearly left Nepal without buying any! Tassssssssty!
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