25 OCT 98

I have spent the last week hanging out in Kathmandu and figuring out what to do next. Every day my plans change as I find out new information. But, at last, I have come up with a plan.

Tomorrow, Gary and I will take a local bus to Jiri. The bus ride takes about 12 hours to go 190 kilometers. It cost us each about three dollars, but that includes the extra seat we had to get for our backpacks.

Jiri is the end of the road and from there we will walk. We will take a little over a week to get up to the Everest area. My friends Mike and Tim, along with two other people, will meet us in Namche Bazar. From there we will take about two weeks to walk around the high mountains in the Mt. Everest area. Then Gary and I will keep walking southeast for another two weeks until we get to Hile. From there we will catch a bus back to Kathmandu.

We should get back here around my birthday. I will check for mail at the American Express office (hint, hint). On the ninth of December we will start a four day kayak course on one of the nearby rivers.

It will probably be getting pretty cold in this mountain kingdom by then. For today at least, the plan is to go around India until March or so and then come back up here to Nepal. I will then take a walk around the Annapurna region before heading home.

The Internet costs about five cents per minute here, which is pretty good. It is also very fast.

On Friday I ate lunch at a little place across the street. The waiter's 15 year old brother-in-law had no school that day and was hanging out at the restaurant. Segun became my guide for the afternoon. We went up to the Monkey Temple and he explained a bit of it to me. We also took a bunch of local buses around the area. I was able to ask him all sorts of questions about life in Nepal and I learned a lot.

I think my diet will change considerably tomorrow. I expect to be eating little more than rice and beans for the next five weeks. This will be a big change from my time here in Kathmandu. I usually eat yogurt and granola with bananas and oranges in the morning. For lunch and dinner I have been choosing from one of the many Italian, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Tibeten, Nepali, and American places in the tourist district.

I don't think I will be able to update this for about six weeks, but it should be a pretty exciting update when I do.