24 hours ago I was sitting in the comfort and quiet peace  of the airport lounge at Perth Airport, enjoying a skinny latte and watching The Crown on Netflix on my smart phone.
A plane trip is a plane trip, but I was  very excited to see Mt Everest out of the window, not so excited to see the smog over Kathmandu.

Quick note to the guy on the Nepal  forum who said it takes about 15 minutes to get through the visa line, perhaps if you are first off the plane, sprint through the immigration hall and get to the only immigration person who doesn’t  move as if they are working at high altitude. For the rest of us, about an hour! I had been busy congratulating myself because I had Nepalese Rupees at the ready, but it turns out their country’s currency is not acceptable so I had to scramble through my bag trying to find a combination of Singapore and Australian dollars to pay for my visa.

Off to the luggage carousel, waiting, waiting, waiting…..and after a while just a group of us watching a lonely backpack go round and round. An American guy went off to see if he could find out where our luggage was, literally fell over a pile of Priority luggage which had been taken off and put in a pile in front of another carousel!

Luckily the rest of immigration was uneventful and I made my way outside…..yep, I’m in another country. The smog , the smell, “Carry your bags Madame”, people jostling,taxi drivers offering Namaste and a “very cheap ride Madame”, horns blaring,  a mass of waving  names, Beryl Mahew caught my eye, I wonder who Beryl was, where she came from, what she was doing in Nepal? And there was my sign, Mrs Patricia Anderson, and I was shaking hands with Vision who was to be my porter, a golden scarf wound around my neck to welcome me to Nepal and  bundled into a car with no seat belts except for the driver. And there we were, in the middle of a cacophony of swerving cars all trying to funnel out of the airport through the one car entrance.

We had an hour’s drive through Kathmandu, then into the mountains for 5 hours during which time every tooth rattled, every bone jarred, my bum bounced and my bladder was given such a thorough shaking that I  eventually was forced to use the toilet at the local equivalent of a truck stop. All I will say about that is I really do need to work on my squats, anything else would be too indelicate!

I had a tea of delicious potato samosas and sickeningly sweet deep fried pretzel and according to Vision was charged way too much by the shop keeper, who apparently was a bad,  bad man!

And now I am sitting in the lounge of the Mountain View Hotel in Pokhara, sipping my Marsala tea. I love travel!