Sunauli
We finally arrived in Nepal at the border town of Sunauli after getting a very cramped shared jeep from the train station in Gorakhphur. Getting over the border was relatively pain free and we decided to wait until later that evening to get a night bus to Kathmandu. To waste some of the hours we spent our time in a restaurant playing cards – primarily a game most of you will know called “shithead”. As it got dark we got on our bus – not the nicest of buses we’ve ever been on – and had to put up with some random drunken guy hassling us and 2 Israeli guys in front of us – luckily he got kicked off the bus just after we set off though! We then had to try and get some sleep and hope that we would arrive around 5.30am the following morning.

Kathmandu
Well we didn’t arrive at 5.30am, in fact it was nowhere near – we finally rolled into the bus station in Kathmandu at around 11am which meant that we really hadn’t needed to book the rather expensive room when we were at the border! Matters were made worse when we actually arrived at the hotel where we’d booked our room and found out that we’d been completely lied to and we were stuck with a very basic room – something we could have gone and found ourselves for half the price!

After we had a shower we felt much better and headed out to try and find a replacement power adaptor for the laptop. By a minor miracle we managed to find a working replacement within half an hour and could finally relax and get on with our sightseeing! Finding a new room turned out to be just as easy and we reserved a room that we’d stayed in last time we were in Nepal for the following morning. Given how little sleep we’d had and the relief of getting a new adaptor we spent the rest of the afternoon playing more cards and drinking bottomless filter coffees for the amazing price of just 40p each!

The following day we went to Durbar Square and wandered around for a few hours and met a few interesting characters and also some Sadhus, Hindu holy men, although we’re pretty convinced that most of them are just here for to make money off tourists! We also took a trip to the nearby town of Patan to visit another Durbar Square, to be honest it wasn’t really worth it as it was barely any different to the one in Kathmandu so we decided not to go and visit a third Durbar Square in Bhaktaphur.

We also went to visit Swayambhunath, a large white stupa on a nearby hilltop, however as we were climbing the stairs up to the stupa we noticed a couple of the monkeys starting to get a little too close to us and soon realised that they we were after our small bottle of coke. Stupidly I tried to scare the female monkey away by clapping my hands (like we’d seen the locals do) but I must have clapped too hard or something because she started to grin and bear her teeth, never a good sign, but then she scampered off. Just as we thought we were rid of the monkeys a large male monkey made his way slowly over to me and immediately spotted the top of the coke bottle that I’d stuffed into one of my pockets. There seemed to be no getting rid of this monkey as he just came straight over and tried to pull the bottle from out of my pocket, I tried to fend him off with the camera tripod but that just seemed to piss him off and he started to lunge at me bearing his teeth, and then from out of nowhere the female monkey had come back and had jumped at my back. That was the point when we both decided to abandon the coke bottle and get away from the monkeys as quickly as we could – these monkeys were clearly addicted to coke (and could spot a bottle a mile off!) and within a minute they’d managed to unscrew the top and drink the entire contents!

After recovering from the monkey attack we took a trip to Pashupatinath, which is where people are cremated by the side of the Bagmati River. The main attraction of this place for us were the vast amount of Sadhus that hang around there – see the photos below! We also got to witness a full cremation service, as we were sat down talking to one of the locals we noticed a woman who had been brought down to the side of the river on a gurney with a doctor holding a drip and pumping air into her lungs, within a minute the pump and mask were removed from her face and he checked for a pulse. Clearly she had just died right in front of us and then they went through the process of placing her by the side of the river and soaking her feet in the water and pouring water from the river into her mouth (a cleansing ritual). Then once the family and friends had arrived they removed her clothing and placed it in the river and covered her in a silk cloth and placed flowers and other ritual items on the body. The funeral pyre had been set up just a few metres away and the male relatives carried the body over and carried it around the pyre three times before placing it on top. Then the sons of the woman took their tops off and all had a piece of string that they placed over their neck  and under their left arms – they were then given a piece of wood that had been set on fire and the eldest son carried this, followed by his brothers and carried it around the pyre three times before he set fire to the head of the corpse. It was quite an experience…