Back in Kathmandu

Arrived in Nepal, ready to set out tomorrow morning to attempt that most popular of mountain walks, the Annapurna circuit, making a lazy circle through a good portion of western Nepal. I'm with a group of MBA students, and already our managerial potential has shone brightly, mostly though in contrast to our ability to actually execute. Despite the storm of planning spreadsheets, only most of us managed to show up in the right city on the right day. By tomorrow, however, we should be united and ready to set out to Pokhara.

It's nice to be back in Nepal, although my very fond memories of Kathmandu from my last trip here I now realize have more to do with the fact that I was coming from the vast wasteland of Tibet than with the city itself. Now, having arrived from a very comfortable room in the great epicurean capital of Delhi, I see this place as considerably dirtier and the food much worse than I remember.

I hear that the Annapurna circuit has excellent infrastructure in the form of "tea houses" along the way in which to sleep and eat. But I hear that the rumours of wi-fi in the villages are false, and so the next post for me may be not until after the 11th, when I return to India, which will be, as per my preference, overland. I'm going to fly from a Himalayan airstrip back to Pokhara, in the west of Nepal, and then from there take a bus to Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha, and from there to Varnasi, that holiest of Hindu bathing spots.

Delhi in August, in September

The driver from the airport told me that the annual august monsoon rains, the ones that nearly drowned me on my first visit to India two year ago, had still not come. Today, to my great fortune, they came, giving me the excuse to do nothing but sit in my hotel room and read my new books. This morning I spent a full hour or two wandering the Sunday book market, and then made it back to my Sheraton suite to sit on the couch and read - spending some of the last of the frequent traveller point currency I earned during my three years as a professional traveller. After three weeks of seeing no books but what I brought with me, the sight of these millions of books spread out along two miles of road were as welcome as the air conditioning once I got back to the hotel.

The flight yesterday from Almaty to Delhi was unremarkable. So much so that when I commented to Karina, my Kyrgyz roommate who was with me, just how remarkable it was that we flew from Almaty to Delhi, she didn't understand me.

We arrived in the city at 4am, and spent the day on a whirlwind sightseeing tour of the city. I took her from Old Delhi to New Delhi to New New Delhi, all the while enjoying the swamp of India's humidity, which makes 4am as awful as 4pm, and which you must either learn to like, or leave. I like it just fine, once I'm back in my cool hotel room. The photo above is a shot of the Red Fort, the great palace built by Shah Jahan, the Muslim builder of the Taj Mahal. We took it standing in front of Delhi's oldest church. And across the street from a Sikh shrine. To the right, you can see a Hindu temple, and of course, on the left, a capitalist temple.

I was planning to go and see some more monuments today, particularly those left by the earliest Mughals, those most closely descended from the heroes of Central Asia (Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, was both a great-great-grandson of Temur and a descendant of Genghis Khan). But not today, today I will try to get a jump on my new books, and rest my still swollen ankle before I fly up tomorrow to Kathmandu to join my classmates and start our Himalayan trek. Sam, my college friend, is joining me. I will go pick him up from the airport in a few hours. I am amused to think that is has been a full 6 years since I went to pick him up at Heathrow when he came to visit me while I was studying in Oxford. The next day, we flew to Amsterdam, rented a car, drove to Prague, then drove back again, having stumbled upon a freshman from our rugby team and bringing him back with us. I got Sam back to Heathrow before his weekend trip was over.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld