Flew with Jet Airways http://www.jetairways.com/ from Heathrow. managed to blag an exit row for the overnight flight to Delhi - the extra leg-room more than made up for the child being sick before takeoff necessitating a cleaner to come on board an mop up. Easy conection at Delhi with staff hovering to make sure we didn't go astray.
Kathmandu airport, apparently shoe-horned between houses and mountains, provided light relief in the shape of a post-colonial civil service bureaucracy. Thi required us to queue first to pay for the entry visa. The you mut take the two recepts you've been given and queue at a second desk where one person checks the receipts, a second writes out your visa details and a third signs it, when he gets back from the loo.
The drive from the airport proved that the crucial skill for drivers is to be able to deliver a rapid staccato on the car horn to warn all and sundry to get out of the way. He who hoots loudest and longest has right of way. Miraculously this seems to work and we arrived in one piece at the baroque splendour of the Shanker Hotel http://www.shankerhotel.com.np/ Under the circumstances it only added to the sense of the alien that Nepal drives on the left like the UK.
After a shower we went for a wander round the Thamel district of the city. As well as the usual shops selling tourist tat (Tourist: "What is he making?" Guide: "He's making it old.") and trekking essentials, there are money-changers. These are semi-legal but well-controlled and all offering identical rates, taken that morning off the internet. There are also the ubiquitous internet cafes, as well as normal bars (with and without "shower dancing girls") and restaurants.
After the third offer of hashish we retreated to a rooftop terrace for a Gorkha beer and a vegetable curry as night fell.
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