26th May 1992 Day 311

The Diary
A day of unexpected happenings. We jumped from 9 and 10 on the waiting list to confirmed for the 27th. We had our tickets amended and cancelled on the 28th. We went to the bank, I bought some travellers cheques and was allowed to take some US dollars as well. We then went to the Poste Restaurante and I received a letter from Katrina from Sport and Rec. Now I'm up on all the gossip and she also mentioned that Brad had been to Nepal. It's a shame we missed him and Sean. Oz phoned Beth, everything we'd sent home had arrived and she'd got a week off at the end of July.

The local neighbourhood

Next door's pig - it lived in the living room as far as I could tell

We then wandered around trying to spend our Nepalese rupees on useful articles. I bought Walkman batteries, a spare camera battery, film including enhanced colour film and a T-shirt. We also had a couple of strange pizzas. A sort of curry with wooden peas on a pizza base. My stomach is back to normal now so we celebrated by having a proper pizza at the San Francisco Pizza House and listened to a group of Americans seated at the far side of the room. Why do they all talk so LOUD?


2012
"Poste Restaurante" - see yesterday.


Sport and Rec people are here


A Walkman? Remember them? 80s iPods without the fanbois.

25th May 1992 Day 310

The Diary
Oz's first lie in for 6 days but as usual we were woken by the howling dogs. When we got outside it was drizzling and it continued in the same vein all day. We tried IA again, still 9 and 10 for Wednesday so we bought a ticket for Thursday. We got talking to an ex-Gurkha in a restaurant who'd been at Aldershot from 76-80. We guessed he'd been in England in the 70s because he kept talking about discos and birds. He looked a bit past it now though. We also visited the British Council Library and dived into 2 week old copies of The Independent, Telegraph and Times. It made me a little homesick , but it's not long to go now and I'm feeling better as the tablets are doing their stuff.

Wonder if this was why I got sick?

Something for the weekend sir?

I phoned Christy and discovered Sarah and Dave had been refused their visa extension, Dave's quit Oracle, Sarah's stopped seeing John Curry and it looks like Christy will move home after her sister's wedding. Never a dull moment. Christy's life seems to have disappeared from around her though, although I suppose Dave and Sarah's has too. A few weeks ago it was marriage and a life in Oz and now it's neither. Christy talked about getting a 2 year working visa for the UK as she's been granted citizenship bar the ceremony and she thinks it will be very difficult to get UK residency. I think her plans change every time I phone her. It's not worth worrying about it as there's nothing I can do about it at the moment. I joked about the disgusting letter I'd received the previous day and mentioned I'd received one from AB as well even though he did address it to Poste Restaurante!


Back at the guest house I added a page on to the end of Oz's letter to Cat and Amber and then it was time to brave the rain and eat. We finally got in KC's but what was the fuss about? Overpriced and we've had better food elsewhere. Still, the main thing is I've only been to the toilet once today and I'm already feeling much better.

24th May 1992 Day 309

The Diary
I took a particularly obnoxious stool in a 35mm plastic film case to the clinic to be examined. The verdict? Gastroentiritis and the previous pills were completely useless. The stool was described as very pussy! I was to take some new tablets once per day and to eat whatever I wanted. I wandered back to Thamel after trying the British Council Library which was closed. I headed for the San Francisco Pizza House and indulged myself and then went back to wait for Oz.

He soon arrived and greeted me with the words "are you better then?" mistakenly believing that I was. "No" I could only reply and proceeded to explain what had happened. The people at the ATS and Hotel Lake View had told him I was better and that that was why I'd gone back to Kathmandu. Wrong.

I asked him about the trek and he said he'd had a good time, been caught in the rain a few times and the view from Poon Hill was spoilt by the weather. He'd met quite a few people en route and also been to his guide's house.

I told him about the flights and we went to Indian Airlines but we were still 9 and 10 on the standby list. Try again tomorrow. Rum Doodle for our evening meal and this time the service was a vast improvement.

2012
The view from Poon Hill





Poon Hill Sunrise, Annapurna in Nepal

23rd May 1992 Day 308

The Diary
25rp breakfast in the Everest Steak House, failed to book a flight to Patna (stopped 3 years ago) or Varanassi (computer down) but left a note with my requirements. Temporarily halted by a sudden urge to use the toilets in the Hotel Sherpa I then headed to the telecom centre to make a phone call home. Everyone OK, mam has quit job, small room is to be done out (planned), England had beaten Pakistan again (too late now), Leicester v Blackburn play-off final, parcel had arrived from Singapore, Sean had just rolled into bed after a night round Louise's (oh yeah!), Frank Cook is still our MP and the Holgate End will be 8quid next season (it was 4.50 last time I went) and Andy was getting ready for exams.


Went back to Indian Airlines, wait listed on 27th, confirmed on 28th. I went to the Nepal International Clinic to tell them I need help. As it was Saturday, everyone bar a nurse had the day off. She made me an appointment for the 24th and gave me a plastic photographic film container for a stool sample. It'll never fit!

Graham Gooch?

Went to get some food. Appalling service at the Run Doodle so I left and at the Third Eye they were making the prices up. Took 'The Big Red Train Ride' back and bought Deutsch Leicht Gemacht. In the evening Silence of the Lambs was spoilt by a crowded restaurant. 


Nachste woche werde ich nach Indien abreisen, Mir stehen nur funf Wochen zur Verfugung. Guten Abend Kinder.


2012
I remember this phone call. It was the only time during the trip that I was close to calling it a day and going home. The International Clinic was my last local hope.


Deutsch Leicht Gemacht - German Made Easy (I think!)


Frank cook - our ex-next door neighbour.


Sean and Louise - still married, so it must have been a good night.


The Holgate End ceased to exist in 1995 when Boro moved to the Riverside. First game at the new stadium was the day Sean and Louise got married. 

22nd May 1992 Day 307

The Diary
Outside the Annapurna Travel Service at 6:15am, the owner and the bus turn up at about 6:50am. The bus turned out to be a minibus in which the seats were too narrow and overall it was less comfortable than one of the bigger tourist buses. The trip to Kathmandu was just as bad as the trip to Chitwan and it was cold and rainy and the driver kept putting awful Nepalese music on the stereo. Hopefully this was one of the last bus trips I'd have to make.

Back in KTM, I dropped my bags off at the Dhaulgiri GH and raced to poste restante. Shades of Bangkok, early closing and I'd missed it. I walked back, put a film in for developing, took a book back, bought a Herald Tribune, picked the photos up, read some more of the 'Big Red Train Ride' and that was Friday.


News: England beat Pakistan in the first one day by 79 runs - why wasn't that the news on 26th March? Suchinda Kraprayoon looks like he will resign, the demonstration death toll could be in the hundreds, BT report a GBP3.1billion profit, a quarter of the money that the West is giving to the ex-USSR and O&Y have filed for bankruptcy in Canada.


2012
Why was I interested in O&Y ? Because in 1989 and 1990 I was working in the shadow of this big building site

21st May 1992 Day 306

The Diary
10 months to the day that we flew to the USA and I wish our next country was USA and not India. My bottom certainly does. There's probably more chance of getting to see some of the European Nations Championship in India though. Frank from Chitwan reckoned it was going to be England v Germany in the final.

I got up late, skipped breakfast and made it to 'the strip', as the Yanks would say, in time for dinner. A plateful of chips which is about as daring as I'm going to be at the moment. I booked a bus to Kathmandu and found that the lad in charge of the ATS will be on it too.


Progress. Went to the toilet about 3pm, first time today and the brown liquid has been replaced by lots of mini-stools. Oz should be somewhere near Ghorepani at the moment, enjoying the views.


Visited the owners of the Lake View to pay up and chatted to them and the 'babu'. Failed to get the babu to show any interest in rugby played with 3 coins.


2012
Dinner = lunch


There's some irony in my comments about USA and India. A few years later I was on a business trip to Michigan and had such bad food poisoning from United Airlines food that I spent two weeks in my apartment room and never made it in to the office. A friend who was on the same flight spent about 2 weeks in hospital after eating the same food as me.


I'd decided I'd had enough of hanging out in Pokhara and was going to leave Oz a note telling him where to meet me in Kathmandu. 

20th May 1992 Day 305

The Diary
The least exciting day of 1992. Toast and jam for breakfast and 2 packets of biscuits for the rest of the day. The daily showers came early so I stayed in and finished "An Area of Darkness", which managed to fill me with dread about going to India, and started "The Big Red Train Ride". 

If anything else happened it was even less remarkable than the events so far described. The pills haven't started to do their stuff yet.


2012
Oz would have been on his way up to Poon Hill - I'm sure it was much more interesting.

19th May 1992 Day 304

The Diary
I posted letters to Christy and Neil Stewart and cards to Howie and Sylvia Hobbs and Ling Khoo. I popped in to see the Annapurna Travel Service to see if Oz had left yet and they said I should see a doctor. They phoned up the clinic and said if I came back at 3:30pm they would take me there. I bade Oz farewell and retreated back to my room.


At 3:30 I went back to the ATS and talked to them about Oz's inflatable globe that was now hanging in the shop. They made several more phone calls to the clinic and at about 4:15 I was put in a taxi with Krishna, the owner's younger brother and taken to the clinic. Krishna paid for the taxi, which surprised me as I'd assumed he was along for a free lift into town as well as to help me.


Krishna did the talking at the clinic and I bypassed the queue to see the doctor. He did a thorough examination, pulse, blood pressure, listened to my chest etc. without doing a stool examination. He explained the stool exam wasn't too precise and even if it came up negative there was still a 30% chance of something being there. He wrote out a prescription for 5 days supply of tablets and some re-hydration powders and I gave him 200rp. I declined the receipt as 2 pound 50p was not worth the hassle of an insurance claim.


Krishna had a pair of walking boots polished, I bought us both a drink and then we wandered down to the King's statue with him trying to teach me Nepali and me trying to understand his English. He even paid for teh bus back to the lake side.

I retreated back to my room, only surfacing for a salami pizza. Big mistake. Tomorrow it's back to the plain diet. I might as well help the drugs do their stuff. I bought a couple of Rising Nepals and discovered a State of Emergency had been declared in Bangkok as the demonstrations had forced the military into action. Nigel Mansell had won his 5th straight GP of the season - surely he'll get to be world champion this time - and Gary Lineker had missed a penalty and the chance to tie Bobby Charlton's England goalscoring record in a 1-1 draw  with Brazil.


2012
Neil Stewart, Sylvia Hobbs and Ling Khoo were all from PW Sydney I think. I really only remember Neil as he was the partner there.


Oz's inflatable globe - I'd forgotten about this. In the days before ipads and google maps we carried an inflatable globe around to track our progress around the world.

Nigel Mansell did win, Gary Lineker never equalled the record. Mansell's 5 straight wins at the start of the season were a record until Schumacher equalled it in 2004.

18th May 1992 Day 303

The Diary
Most of the shops in town were shut and we discovered this was because the communist party had called a strike. To work was at your own risk as dissenters shops were usually stoned. It was quite peaceful down by the lake side but apparently there was quite a bit of trouble in the town. And all of this is just because of upcoming local elections. 


We decided today that Oz should go and do a 5-day trek in Ghorepani and I should continue with my recovery. If we wait until I'm completely better it may be a long wait. Trips to the toilet were still becoming less frequent so I risked a lasagne in the evening. Oh to be well again.


2012
Communisn in Nepal seems to be quite complex. This chart shows links between the various communist parties. Shades of the People's front of Judea.

17th May 1992 Day 302

The Diary
My slow recovery seemed to be continuing so we hired a couple of mountain bikes for the day. The place we hired them from was the same place that Oz had taken some negatives for reprints. Not only had they taken a day longer than promised to turn up but when they did they had an early 70s white border. It's lucky Oz didn't give them my finished film to develop. More of the photo shop later.
  

We set off into town and it was a lot further than it appeared on the map. The town had no historical interest at all as far as we could discern. and like many other towns in Nepal, and Asia, was built of concrete and brick shoe boxes liberally covered in badly painted adverts. Coca-cola is a difficult logo to escape from. Cows roamed the streets, taxis and bikes and pedestrians wildly weaved in and out of each other and the shit and the dirt that cover most of Nepal's roads.

We went to the end of town, turned round and then it was downhill all the way. By the time we'd got down to the airport, fatigue, hunger and illness had got to me. I left Oz and headed back. I stopped to watch a demonstration by the Nepali Congress Party (tree) as it wound it's way to a big tree and stopped for a few speeches. I'm sure most of the people carrying banners continued walking past the tree and went home.


In the evening I decided to have a proper meal as I thought I was going to die of hunger before the diarrhoea got me. I had a chicken enchilada and seemed to survive the night relatively well. 


Back to the story of the photo shop. When we returned our bikes a big crowd had gathered in the shop listening to a Canadian or an American (they're the same anyway) protesting about some photos he'd had developed by them. He was very unhappy and was insisting he shouldn't have to pay. We didn't discover what was wrong with them or whether he got satisfaction. Shades of Oz a few days earlier although Oz's protests were a little less vehement and didn't pull in the crowds.


2012
Instagram seems to have popularised the look that we were all trying to avoid.

16th May 1992 Day 301

The Diary
my dashes to the toilet are less frequent but the end result is always the same dark brown liquid and a pain in the ring. The force with which the eruption occurs could probably power one of the battered Nepalese Tata buses over the Himalayas.

Eruption

As I didn't need to immediately retreat to the wc after breakfast, Oz and I walked to the dam at the end of Phewa Tal (Lake Phewa) and he had a couple of passport photos taken for his trekking permit. We sat around for a while and then slowly walked back and in the process, I burnt my nose and Oz his forehead. 

The rest of the day was spent lazing by the toilet.

15th May 1992 Day 300

The Diary

I'm sticking to my diet and hopefully if the diarrhoea clears up in time we'll still be able to do a 7-day trek to Ghorepani and Poon Hill. This was another day of doing very little due to the need to stay in close proximity to the toilet. The little old man in his hut-cum-shop just along from Lake View Guest House is profiting from my illness as I'm buying litres of water, biscuits and a daily toilet roll from him. At the moment I'm probably his only source of income and he invariably tries to sell me more. If I buy water, he offers biscuits and chocolate as well, if I buy toilet roll he tries to sell me water and biscuits. You've got to admire him for his effort but as my purchases are pure necessities I get a bit few up of it.

14th May 1992 Day 299

The Diary
Now I know what Oz felt like, up during the night on the toilet, and minutes after food or liquid goes in at one end it comes out at the other. My diet now consists of toast and jam with black tea, naan bread with black tea, plain chips with black tea and an orange flavoured solution designed to restore minerals and salts to the dehydrated body. Glucose biscuits are an additional source of energy. I'm feeling listless and drained and having a cold doesn't help.

Wasting away with food walking past

The evening "meal" was followed by a quick dash to the toilet. Well, as fast as I can manage without the contents of my stomach escaping.

Home from home

13th May 1992 Day 298

The Diary
By today it was obvious that my mild stomach complaints of the last few days had turned into the full-blown disease - the trots. The 1 hour bird walk at 6:30am was crap anyway but it was even worse as I was holding my stomach in.


We were taken back to Tadi Bazaar in a jeep with 15 people in and on it and we were given a ticket for the bus to Pokhara. Thus began 7 hours of hell and the worst bus journey of my life. I sat there holding my stomach in for the whole time, aching all over, unable to move because the bus was so full, not wanting to move because my bottom would erupt. As this was not a tourist bus it stopped for long periods at every town on the route so a few people could weedle their way off and a few more could squeeze themselves on. My seat was broken and when anyone standing in the aisle put their hand on it, it moved into the reclined position and as this must have happened about 100 times I felt like crying. "Infinite patience" I kept saying to myself and dreamt of being home or in Sydney. I think they managed to make a journey that should have been about 2 1/2 hours take 7 hours.


Just before we reached Pokhara more people squeezed on to the bus but they were trying to get us to stay at their guest houses. I didn't have the energy to talk or say no, so I said to Oz that we'd have a look at the first one. The Lake View turned out to be pretty good and I was immediately testing the ablutions.


This area of Pokhara is like a country version of Thamel with lots of restaurants, travel agents, bookshops etc. For dinner I had tomato soup and a roti but had to leave immediately to relieve my botty.

2012
The worst journey of my life. Ever.


Google maps can't seem to work out the distance but it's probably about 110km !





View Larger Map


The Lake View seems to have been upgraded !!!

12th May 1992 Day 297

The Diary
Up at 6am, we had breakfast and then did a short cruise along the river in a dug-out canoe. The canoe seemed overloaded and as the river was very low we ended up stuck several times. I was glad the river was so low as I would have been able to save my camera equipment if we capsized. I still remember Katherine. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice and in any case I didn't have a paddle or a battle this time.

Once we were back on dry land we went on a jungle walk with our two Indian friends and our non-too-informative guide. I asked "what's making that noise?" and he replied "bird". I didn't think it was a rhino, which by the way, the Nepalese pronounce as rhino-saurus, which conjures up images of one-horned dinosaurs, roaming around the Terai. We did come across a rhino cooling itself in a waterhole but we moved on quickly when it started to move towards the bank. I don't think the guide's stick would have beaten it back and he was probably more scared than us as one of the locals had been killed by a rhino the previous day. All the other animals were scared away by our herd of tourists doing a good impression of a herd of elephants.

Going back we had to wade through the river. The Indian couple weren't too happy at this as no-one had thought to mention it and she was wearing a sari and he was wearing long trousers. In the afternoon we went on a 5 hour jeep ride through the park rather than an hour on an elephant. The jeep ride turned out to be excellent value and we saw lots of everything except tigers and sloth bears, pushed the jeep out of a mud bath, had a good laugh and talked about Sydney with an English lad and an Ozzie girl. We also saw the gharial crocodile farm.

We spent the evening talking to Frank, a 24-year-old, civil engineering student from Stuttgart who supported Nurnberg, didn't like Thatcher, was quite left-wing, liked pubs, watched the BBC and whose English was better than he thought. We discussed politics, TV, music, culture, Americans and fascism. He'd been in Nepal for quite a while and was soon to make the trek to Everest base camp. Sooner him than me.

11th May 1992 Day 296

The Diary
Up at about 5:30am for a pick-up at 6:30am which turned out to be a young lad who showed us to the bus station. We had to carry our own rucksacks. What a hard life. Even at 6:30am Kathmandu was already wide awake, unlike us. The tourist bus was a standard Nepalese style bus and it's tourist label just signified it stopped less often. It still stopped too much. 

I was amazed at the locals in the back seats behind us, smoking, continually moving around and making as much noise as possible. The road out from Kathmandu seemed to be being laid as the bus lurched and bounced from one hole to another, narrowly avoiding steep drops and other buses and lorries on the road. Reading Time magazine and Animal Farm got me through the 7 hour trip. At Tadi Bazaar the usual bus stop chaos was occurring but we were soon on a jeep to the "Jungle Tourist Camp (Before it was Dipak Lodge)" (Whether this means it is due to become Dipak Lodge I don't know).


We were shown to our dung and mud hut by a shaven headed cook. My pillow was covered in mould and the mosquitoes were breeding in the mozzie nets. We then had a very dodgy vegetarian lunch but the Indian couple from Calcutta seemed to enjoy it. I complained about the pillow and then the manager, who was the spitting image of A J Hiscox my sixth form tutor, and who had just finished a 2-week tourism course in Kathmandu, very politely explained that they were very quiet and we could move into one of the concrete rooms with attached bathroom  at no extra cost.

Dung hut

We were taken to see the park reception centre and then the sunset over the river. As usual when we try to see a sunrise/sunset it was too cloudy. We had our evening meal and retreated to our mozzie nets and candles as an electrical storm came over.


2012
The dung hut was made of elephant dung.


I remember getting through the whole of Animal Farm during the journey.


It was the owner not my sixth form teacher that had just done the 2-week tourism course, in case you were wondering.


I seem to remember that the concrete rooms weren't much better than the dung huts. It looks a lot better these days on the website.

10th May 1992 Day 295

The Diary
The trolley bus to Bhaktapur is rarely uncomfortably crowded said Tony Wheeler. This must have been one of those rare occasions. Fortunately it was only a 45 minute ride. Bhaktapur was pleasant to walk in as motor vehicles seemed to stay out of the old area. Another good Durbar Square but I made the mistake of taking a photo of a young girl on one of the temples. She then followed us around for several hours holding out her hand and repeating "photo rupee". Her only other word of English was "yes" which was always preceded by my "no".

The photo-rupee girl

At this point I must admit to making a mistake in my diary as yesterday's lunchtime encounter with the Cumbrian had, in fact, happened, today. Yesterday we ate in an Austrian Vegetarian Cafe overlooking the stupa and today it was in a guest house cafe overlooking Durbar Square. When we came out of the cafe the photo-rupee girl was waiting for us but now she had a small baby girl on her back. Probably to make us feel guilty. But armed with our "infinite patience" and guiding words from LP which says giving money will only encourage them we weren't going to crack. We had quite a bit of fun with her following us and after we'd lulled her into a false sense of security we disappeared at breakneck speed up a side alley.


The trolley bus back was less crowded and for some reason only cost half the 2rp price it cost to get there. We  paid another visit to Rum Doodle and went to bed early.


2012
Infinite Patience was our catch-phrase through much of our travels throughout SE Asia.When things got difficult or crowded or took too long we would take a deep breath and say "infinite patience".

9th May 1992 Day 294

The Diary
We hired two 12 speed mountain bikes from 'Honest Joe's' and Oz thought he'd signed his life away after reading the regulations. The rules were like the back of a BR ticket; you're entitled to nothing but responsible for everything.


We cycled to Pashupatinath, Nepal's major Hindu temple and then headed on to Bodhnath to see the largest stupa in Nepal, which graces the front cover of LP. In a restaurant overlooking the stupa we chatted to a middle-aged Cumbrian who seemed to be spending his life in Nepal and the Philippines. He seemed a bit dim to me as after he started a conversation  about the political unrest in Nepal, we asked what the riots he had witnessed were about. He thought for a while and then said "eee.....I don't know".

We headed further out into the valley towards Sundarijal and the problems with the bikes became very evident. in low gears the chain would slip causing your feet to jump violently off the pedals and making it very awkward to get up hills. We eventually made it despite the hills and the bumpy roads and then immediately turned around and went back to Kathmandu.

In the evening we went back to the Third Eye Restaurant and towards the end of the meal our peace was shattered by an extremely loud and inconsiderate Irishman who sat down to share our table. He ordered two beers, asked us about our meals, said Oz's smelt like shit and that he was going to be ill, issued a few more profanities and did a runner with his mate before the beer turned up.


We then set off to try and watch the FA Cup Final. The paper seemed to indicate that it wasn't being screened at the Hotel Sherpa with it's Star TV, our worst fears were confirmed. To round off a bad evening we were caught in a downpour going back to the guest house.

2012
I think this was the first Cup Final I'd missed watching since 1973 - the last time Sunderland had been in the cup final.