L'Arte di Viaggiare - Art of Travel - Francis Galton
5 July 9 p.m. Katmandu
Namaste Nepal En
At the airport, Ibrahim, Jane and I are accosted by a crowd of Nepalese who offer us hotels and guesthouses “clean and very cheap”. With great difficulty, we manage to rid ourselves of them, but only by agreeing to take one of their taxis. The bus, they tell us, has already gone at this hour. A guard, who may not have been entirely unbiased, endorsed this declaration ... We arrive at the Marco Polo Guest House, which I had booked by letter from Italy. The owner, concerned, had already called the airport to find out why I had not yet arrived. Simple; the plane was two hours late, and that wasn’t all: our torch batteries had been seized and we had had a long walk around the airport to retrieve them. After the allocation of rooms, we go out to look for a restaurant. However, it’s past ten and everything is now completely closed. “I’m not really hungry”, I say to Jane, “I've had a plain dinner.”* However, Jane, who having declined the meal offered to us on the plane because she didn’t fancy it, consoles herself with some hazelnuts, the only edible thing available at this time.
* pun with plane