Nepal Day 22 - Lukla to Kathmandu

 We woke to our alarms before sunup, and the dining room was open early for our breakfast. Along with Bire we carried our bags down to the airport where we followed a chaotic process to X-ray carry ons, weigh bags ( the folks in front of us were all over weight, no problem), and line up for our flight. Nobody really stands in lines, but it all came together. 

Since the season is slow, we are flying direct to Kathmandu instead of Ramechhap plus a 4 hour jeep ride on winding roads, a pleasant surprise. We had the first flight of the day on Tara Air. Getting in the first wave of flights greatly reduces your chances of postponement due to clouds as the flight is visual. Ed had the seat right behind the cockpit. By 7:30am, we had landed in Kathmandu and grabbed a taxi to Thamel, the tourist district where our hotel is.

Since it was early and our room wasn’t ready, we dropped our bags and wandered around town: finding a working ATM (not easy), 2nd breakfast at the Pumpernickel Bakery, walking to some shops, lunch of pizza at the Roadhouse Cafe, ice cream at Silk, water bottles at the Thamel Mart, check in and showers and clean clothes (heaven). In the afternoon we organized laundry of our trekking clothes and went to the Garden of Peace. It was absolutely packed, primarily with young Nepali women in small groups taking photos of each other or selfies, inspecting the photos, and presumably uploading to social media. We could barely move around the beautiful gardens without getting in the way of someone’s photo.

We had smash burgers near our hotel and had an early evening. We saw monkeys on a ledge of a nearby building, a reason to be cautious about open windows. Our room was hot and stuffy. Presumably the AC is limited at the front desk, something to inquire about tomorrow, quite a change from our freezing rooms on trek.