Hi Everyone,

I'm sure the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that we are not as planned in Hong Kong. We have had a slight change of plan, well actually we have completely changed our plans. We decided a couple of days ago that China was trying its hardest to be as diificult as possible in letting us travel there so who were we to get in its way. It is also pretty difficult to spend time in Nepal amongst the Tibetan exiles whose culture we have enjoyed so much and not feel the slightest resentment towards China- even if we aren't, like many, wearing Free Tibet t-shirts. As well as being unable to visit Tibet, the difficulty in getting a Chinese visa meant we would either have to spend two very expensive weeks in Hong Kong or when our limited visa ran out we would have to go to Korea and fly to Mongolia from there neither of which greatly appealed. We were then left with the fantastic opportunity to pick anywhere in the world to spend the next two months. This free reign is obviously constrained by the number of places that can easily be accessed from Nepal and for which we can get visas on arrival - this ruled out our original plan of Uzbekistan and the other stans of central Asia. So that leaves us today with a flight to Turkey where we plan to visit some of the less touristy inland areas before island hopping through Greece then Interrailing home through Eastern Europe: Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bulgaria etc.

So now you are up to date on our future plans i'll fill you in on the rather eventful past week. You will be glad to know I have finally figured out a way to stop the ankle of my right foot hurting - sadly this involved breaking the big toe on my left foot...I now have a rather unique double limp. This all happened when we headed to a resort on the Tibetan Border for two days of rafting followed by two days of canyoning. Rafting went without a hitch we had a really great group and had an excellent time on the Grade IV rapids. The next day the two of us set off with two guides to do a bit of Canyoning- this basically involves abseiling, sliding, jumping or zip wiring down a series of waterfalls. The snag is that the rocks round waterfalls are very slippy as I found out during an abseil about an hour in to the first day. My feet slipped from under me and I swung full force into the rock. My toe took most of the damage as well as a few grazes and some rather unpleasant rope burn on my palms. Rather than attempt an agonising hobble down I decided (with my new found ability to do pretty much anything with injured feet) that it would be quicker and easier to carry on abseiling and sliding down to the valley. I have no similar excuse for why I decided to tackle the harder Day 2 as well.

Since our return to Kathmandu we have been rather preoccupied with rearranging our trip (which now seems fate as we were planning to head to the spot where the earthquake has killed thousands) but we did manage a last spot of sight seeing yesterday. We headed to the Tibetan area of Bodnath to see the Buddhist stupa and then to the Hindu temple of Paspupatinath. As well as being the most holy place in Nepal this is also the site where all Nepalis are cremated before having their ashes thrown into the river. What makes this an even more macabre sight is that the bodies are only loosely covered with a sheet which often comes off before being ritually prepared and then placed on a burning ghat (read bonfire) and burnt for three hours. We had the privilige (along with dozens of Nepali onlookers) to see three cremations. A brahmin priest, a young wealthy woman and another poor chap who lay uncovered for about an hour on the side of the river whilst his family sobbed- they are traditionally cremated on the day of their death so this can be the first the family know of it. The whole experience was very moving but the sight and smell of burning flesh is not something either of us want to rush back to any time soon.

So on that rather morbid note we are off for our last taste of the world's best chips.

All the best

Laura and Gareth