*with apologies to Frank Sinatra.

Following hot on the heels of the heat wave stricken post covering Mumbai and Delhi (pun very much intended though doubtless not appreciated) I am now adding a second regret to my travels.

As with Cambodia, I have come to Nepal, fallen in love with it, and not given it anywhere near enough time having flown in and out of Kathmandu with only a week in between. I regret giving such a short window of travel and exploration time to such awesome places.

As with Cambodia, I will be back. As with Cambodia, I have an awful lot more to explore.

Stepping off the plane and into the Himalayas was a literal breath of fresh air. As my last blog post/confessional/over-emoting-befitting-of-the-beta-male-that-I-am (will somebody now please pay me to sell protein supplements? Please?!) made clear, I had experienced a pretty torrid time in Delhi. The ever-present signs of extreme wealth disparity, the poverty, and the stifling heat and pollution made for an 8 day stay that felt much longer. The clean, crisp air of Nepal filled my lungs and seemed to soak up all the crap which I then proceeded to hack up bent over the sink of the gents loo in Katmandu international airport.

The temperature was much cooler, dropping from the mid-40s down to the high 20s/low 30s, and there were daily spectacular lightning showers and thunderstorms. I never thought I’d welcome the sight, sound, and smell of rain. And boy did it rain. It was fucking beautiful.

Whilst in Kathmandu, I was staying a little outside of the beating tourist congested heart of the city, and living in a ‘penthouse’ atop Sal’s Pizza restaurant. It was class. My host Mahesh, a pizza purveying extraordinaire, was incredibly welcoming, friendly, and kind. My distant host, Bill, immediately won me over from hundreds of miles away by adorning his wall with a poster from one of the greatest pictures ever put to film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Compared to the previous couple of weeks of tiny rooms with non-working windows looking out onto brick walls, this was a revelation.

Katmandu is a fascinating and fast growing city as it’s urban sprawl does precisely that out into the surrounding fields and hills. The people are incredibly kind, and welcoming; and given the extraordinary recent political history (up to and including the election of a new Prime Minister in March of this year) everyone I spoke to had interesting stories to tell, and opinions on what role Nepal has played in the past, and how it might continue to sit alongside two powerful neighbours of India to the south, and China to the north. I popped back to a bookshop on my second morning (having picked up some books on Nepal my first afternoon) and ended up sitting around for about two hours shooting the shit with the propriety and a local citizen journalist who has interviewed figures such as the most recent foreign secretary and Noam Chomsky (unfortunately one of Epstein’s lot, it would appear.)

Gladly, the two books I have consumed in the last week about Nepal were terrific (I know I normally do this bit at the end but it makes more sense to go here).

‘Kathamndu’ by Thomas Bell romps through the current changing face of the city as well as extending it’s horizons beyond today and well into the past. The blurb describes the city the book captures as such: ‘Kathmandu is the greatest city of the Himalaya; a place where unique cultural practices that died out in India a thousand years ago have survived. It is a carnival of sexual license and hypocrisy, a jewel of world art, a hotbed of communist revolution, a paradigm of failed democracy, a case study in bungled Western intervention, and an environmental catastrophe.’ Whilst my week in Kathmandu did not see anything by way of the ‘carnival of sexual license’ the book was a terrific read that anyone thinking of visiting Nepal, or not, should read.

Alongside this journalistic and historical analysis, I also read ‘Karnali Blues’ by Buddhisagar which is an autobiographical fiction covering the life of a young Nepalese man and that of his father. A beautiful read.

Unlike many of the places I have visited in recent months, Kathmandu is very much set up for tourist and tourist dollars. In particular, it seems to be a jumping off point and launch pad for those braving Mount Everest and the other hikes and peaks of the Himalayas. Fortunately, I am neither that stupid nor dull to be putting walking at the heart of my travels. It would have been wrong to not go up and down at least one hill so I did spend a good six hours climbing and walking the hills just outside of Kathmandu. It was absolutely stunning and because the proper climbers were elsewhere, I had the place entirely to myself.

Of the tourist sites, I took in plenty of them. Durbar Square was awesome, as was the Pashupatinath temple; the Garden of Dreams was as if I had fallen through a crack in the space-time continuum and physically entered Instagram; and the Narayanhiti Palace was a fascinating window into the recent and not-so-recent past. The Palace was also another tourist spot where phones and cameras had to be handed in and I gotta say- it is the right way to manage such places. I thought I was being dead clever visiting Buddha Stupa ahead of the weekend but had managed to pick Buddha’s birthday for that particular jaunt. Unsurprisingly, it was rammed. I’m an idiot.

All the food I ate was terrific but one hole-in-the-wall place has etched itself forever on my memory and in my stomach. Just a short stroll from my lodgings was a tiny little place that did about five different curries, and an assortment of breads. And what bread it was. Holy shit. The Buff Keema Naan was like no bread I’ve ever tasted. I left a fucking Google maps review for Christ sake it was that good. I shall be going back for the bread alone.

Wash up:

In addition to the books mentioned above, in the last week I’ve also:

• Been listening to ‘Get In’ by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund. Infuriating and in line with absolutely everything critics of Starmer’s Labour party said about them, only at that time to be dismissed as conspiracists and cranks. I suppose two things can be true at once but in any case, a comprehensive and shattering look at how we’ve ended up staring down the barrel of a Farage premiership.
• I’ve also listened in the last week to ‘A Rebel and a Traitor’ by Rory Carroll about Sir Roger Casement (yes… obvious jokes and comparisons are obvious.) It’s a much better book than ‘Killing Thatcher’ which wound me right up given the authors tendency to make declarations about how individuals would have been filling at any given moment. Imagine it’s an even better read given the reader/voice actor is quite irritating.
• Been playing Resident Evil VIII. It’s a proper Resi Evil this one.
• Been watching ‘Mr Nobody against Putin’. Brilliant.

Unfortunately the cost of air travel, which will doubtlessly continue to climb thanks to Bibi and fat Don,  meant that I needed to book my flight back to Colombo, Sri Lanka, sooner than later thus limiting my time in Nepal. It was a mistake and as I opined at the start, it doubles my list of regrets for this period of travel. I will be coming back to Nepal and really getting out into the country at large- especially the border regions with Tibet. I shall be setting up shop, once again, atop Sal’s Pizzas so I am within easy reach of the finest bread that has ever filled my gut.

What a country Nepal is. Stunning.