Tomorrow I start my rafting trip…we will drive 14 hrs to Surkhet, then hike a few hours to our put in point of Sauli. We don’t start on the river til Tuesday, then have 7 days on it. On Days 3-5, we will be about a five day hike from anywhere, the river will be the fastest way to get out. This post is mainly so my family has a few of the details in case I never resurface (Erin, the operator is Equator Expeditions, run by a Scot I believe).

Kathmandu has been good, but I’m ready to move on. There will be 19 westerners and 6 Nepalis. We were instructed to each bring 2 bottles of rum so it should be fun. We are supposed to sleep outside and they claim there are NO bugs/mosquitos, which will be quite the difference from my rafting trip in Bolivia.

My main problem these days has been trying to get rid of this Nepali guy who lives in Michigan (just north of Ohio) but is here visiting his family for Dushain (their biggest festival of the year, today is like Christmas Day). I met him on my first night and he is trying to plan a trek to Everest Base Camp for us together, only I’d rather kill myself than go with him, because I just can’t take his incessant bragging. According to him, he is very well connected, name drops ambassadors, Nepali movie stars, ex beauty queen girlfriends, etc. He claims he can have anyone he wants killed, that when he’s in town villagers come to him to fix their problems. I’m sure there is some truth to it, but when I saw what he called his “resort in the country” and it was just a cement block home (admittedly nicer than a lot of Nepali homes, but practically slums in the US) with some small fields around it, I can see that his vision of reality is different than mine. I told him today that I wanted to go on an organized trek (I figured he couldn’t pay for it), and he said, give me the name of the company and I can get a discount. Aargh. I guess I’m just going to have to lie to him…say it is only for foreigners or something. I can’t believe with the amount of times I haven’t called him and the huge number of times I’ve said no to his constant entreaties to do something with him while I’m here that he hasn’t caught on.

Off to buy my rum.