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Today is the last day of our trip and we woke up at around 7am to catch the flight from Lukla to Kathmandu.
At the rather simple departure gate (the main clock didn't even work!), we felt exactly the same as other travellers - excited at the prospects of leaving the mountains (the lack of amenities, the yak poos on the paths, the lack of lights at night and the altitude for some), but the same time sad about leaving the magical Himalayas which enriched our knowledge and experience.
If watching planes landing or taking off at the most dangerous airport in the world is an entertainment in itself, being on the plane was a rather nerve-wrecking experience. The short runway, the mountainous landscape surrounding the airport, the seemingly aging aircrafts and the fact that a few dozen people set their eyes on your plane throughout the take-off all make you sitting uneasy inside.
However, the take-off was very smooth and very soon we were brought into the rather cloudy sky and not too much above the hills below. From afar, we could sometimes see the snowy mountains appearing above the thick clouds that surrounded them, as if they were floating islands like the ones we saw in the movie Avatar but in white colour. If these scenes made me excited on the way to Lukla, seeing these on the way back to Kathmandu made me feel good about having set foot on some of them (including Mt. Everest).
We arrived at the hotel in Kathmandu at about lunch time so we headed out to Thamel, which is a tourist district in Kathmandu, for food. Perhaps because I didn't have much meat on the mountains (became very cautious after having food poisoning for 3 days after Day 2), I felt very hungry and ate 3 times during the afternoon! The food was very cheap and delicious and the service was very good (have to say service in general is much better than in the UK!).
During our walk-about, I witnessed the low level of economic development in the capital (and this is supposed to be the richest city in Nepal): roads and streets were uneven and full of loopholes, smelly rubbish dumps the size of mini landfills were everywhere, lack of electricity (the city experience daily power cut of up to 14 hours) and the most dis-heartening of all was the severe shortage of clean water. All of the inner city rivers are highly polluted. People who can afford it use bottled water for cooking and drinking but most cannot afford to buy bottled water all the time thus are forced to use contaminated water. This is unimaginable in the part of the world that we live in but this is the harsh reality that these people face everyday.
Mike told me the situation is even worse in many parts of India - Kathmandu is like India but a bit more organised. You would also see uneven roads there but also with cows (and sometimes monkeys) walking wherever they want to and cars and pedestrians have to travel around them because cows are very sacred animals there; you would see large rubbish dumps on the sides of the roads but in India you would also see very young kids searching to the bottom of the rubbish dumps and try to find anything they could sell for money; the situations with electricity and water shortage are similar to Nepal.
I'm sure if this is the case in India, it must be worse in many parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa (although poverty level is significantly lower in China - some of the things I saw in Kathmandu would be considered shocking and unacceptable for many Chinese these days - the political development is lagging well behind the impressive economic progress it's made over the past 4 decades; at least Facebook and Twitter are accessable in Nepal and India).
Anyway, the water issue is a very desparate one in many parts of the world (and could become an issue for the developed world also in the not-too-distant future) and I'm glad that my fund raising campaign for Wateraid is doing well. I've raised targets twice from £1,000 to the now £3,000 and 2/3 has been achieved. I hope that I can be able to raise the remaining £1,000 when I go back to London!
Once again, I'd like to thank those who had made generous donations to the cause and to remind the rest that it is still not too late to contribute! Finally, thanks for everyone who have been following my blog!
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