March 25, Sunday

March 25, Sunday

{Writing this on March 27, too bad I didn’t write this earlier since I would have realized that it was the 25^th on that day, and not the 26^th.  Read on and you’ll see why.}

Alarm clock went off at 4:10 am and I got dressed to go see the sun rise over the Himalayas.  At 4:30 I was in the car and we were driving out of Kathmandu.  We drove east only about 45 km, but it took 1 ½ hours.  The first 20 km only took half an hour, the other 25 km took an hour since we were driving up into the mountains on a narrow switchback road.

By the time we got to the “Mountain View” Hotel it was just starting to get light.  We climbed up 4 stories to the roof top and looked out onto a scene of ….clouds.  We could see the hills surrounding us, but that was about it. 

 The views from the roof of the hotel

 
It is light enough now to distinguish the terraces on the surrounding hills
We waited half an hour for the actual time the sun was rising. Still only see clouds.

The sun had risen; we could tell by the light in the sky, but still couldn’t actually see the sun, or the Himalayas. Even the deep valleys were still in the clouds. So much for seeing the sunrise over the Himalayas.

The sides where we should be seeing the Himalayas are still invisible.  

The Himalayas should be in the background !

We were supposed to spend most of the morning up here and in a look out tower about 3 km away, but there really is no point in wasting time here since it is obvious that I won’t get to see the Himalayas today.
So we start driving back down to Kathmandu, and I can at least now see the countryside we are driving through.

 On the way down, we finally get a glimpse of the sun.

 Terraced hill side for farming

 Winding road back down the mountains

Huge pine tree forest on the way down

 
 Potato fields.

 Crossing a small town

Looking back the way we came, and it is quite dark.  

 This is as good as it is going to get as far as the sun is concerned

On the outskirst of Kathmandu; some modern apartments
Got back to the hotel at about 8:30 am, just in time for breakfast. 

The courtyard of the Blue Horizon Hotel in Kathmandu

I wan't feeling very well and decided to go back to bed.  Slept soundly until past noon !   Got dressed and went out for a walk in the small streets full of little shops full of tourist goo-gaws.   Still didn’t see anything I would want to purchase as a keepsake.  Went back to the hotel and watched some television. 

Check out was at noon and I had not relishes the idea of spending 6 hours waiting outside, so I had paid for the extra night, since my flight was at 11:30 pm.

At 8:30 I left for the airport.  Got to the ticket counter and found out that….. TODAY IS THE 25^th.   My flight to Hong Kong is on the 26^th ! ! !    #*%^#&@#(%  (Insert F word here !)   Really have to pay better attention to the calendar.   Thank God it was a day “early”  and not a day “late”;  that would have been disastrous.

I had two options:  grab a taxi and drive back to the hotel and do it all over again tomorrow   OR   find out if I could get on tonight’s flight instead of tomorrow’s.   I got lucky and there were some extra seats available.  In fact I got really lucky because there was no one sitting beside me, so I had two seats to myself for this overnight flight.  I would at least be able to stretch out a bit.

Slept off and on throughout the night.