The flight from Pokhara landed smoothly. I'm not sure it ever got above the height of the nearby mountain range en route.

A fellow was waiting for me not far from where I took the above picture. He had a sign with my name on it! (I will never get sick of that. It was spelled wrong, but who cares!) He really wanted to carry my pink backpack, so I let him. (He had brought a whole trolley, but all I had brought was the one thing.) I realized after he led me to a car with a different driver that his job was done. I'm not clear on whether the driver was too lazy to wait for me himself or if he let this other guy do it so he had an opportunity for a tip.

Though, one thing was certain. He wanted a tip. I gave the guy a 50 (which is about 50 cents) and got in the comfortable car.

My favorite part about the car was the prayer wheel on the dashboard. It caught my eye often and I don't think I ever saw it stop spinning!

After about forty-five minutes of driving on curvy roads through green hills and passing a single hopping intersection (that I think was the main part of Nagarkot, population 3,500), we pulled into a hotel parking lot near the top of a hill.

The staff were friendly and accommodating. Even though my tour company may have forgotten to give me vouchers for any hotel (turned out not to matter a lot besides making me nervous), they sure did know how to pick 'em!

They led me up and up the stairs to a big room with a beautiful view. I could see the Himalayas from my bed!

I heard music, looked around from the balcony, and spotted a private party having a picnic on a nice, flat area overlooking the mountains.

I decided to take a short walk around and check out the surrounds and see if I could get a little closer to the gathering.

The party was behind a locked gate, but the walk was very nice. I was able to avoid cars completely and just keep to paths and sidewalks. Perfect.

I had returned to my hotel room, logged into email and had just written a note to my mom's friend (who is also in Nepal now) when the internet went down. I walked down to the lobby to get a stronger internet signal...

...and that is when I met Cat!

Cat, a cool British woman, was sitting in the lobby, sorting out a room since her original hotel plans fell through. We struck up a conversation. Turned out she was volunteering in Bangladesh but when forced to leave due to political unrest, she decided to go to India, stopping in Nepal on the way. And here she was!

We hit it off immediately and basically spent the next 24 hours together, showing each other photos on our phones and talking about our current situation, our background stories, and hopes for the future. We ate dinner together and only stopped talking when it was bedtime.

Meeting Cat was a definite highlight of my Nepal trip.

This is the reason to come to Nagarkot. The sunrise over the mountains and (slim) chance of viewing Everest.

I woke up just after 6:00am for the 6:41 sunrise, and wandered around, wrapping my cardigan around my body to keep warm and looking for a good shot.

I got a few.

Although it wasn't crystal clear, it was still quite lovely.

After I'd taken quite a few photos and was starting to get hungry, I took a break from the photo snapping to have breakfast with Cat. The meal was unimpressive; exactly like the hotel in Pokhara, come to think of it. The best part was the pot of masala chai. Then a masala omelet, toast (with the crappy butter and bubble-gum-artificial jam that seems to be the plague of most Indian/Nepali hotels), and soggy corn flakes in hot milk. The lunch and dinner yesterday were much better.

I never made it to Nagarkot proper, but I enjoyed my short time with pretty views in all directions.

...but I know the question you are really asking is, did I see Everest?

Well, not exactly, but I did pinpoint exactly which cloud it was behind. That's something!

How did I know? Well, I had help from this very handy sign the hotel had on its back porch.

I painstakingly lined up what I saw to the view the sign diagrammed from Nagarkot and it looked something like this:

I managed to line everything up but... no peak. Probably hiding in the clouds, like it does. But here you have it: the closest you can see Everest from somewhere reasonably close to Kathmandu.

I checked out of the hotel later that morning and my driver took me back in the direction of Kathmandu. We entered a preserved ancient city (pop: 80,000) called Bhaktapur and stopped at the complex of palaces that is yet another World Heritage Site. A new entrance fee record of 1,100 rupees followed.

A young man appeared nearly instantly after we parked the vehicle. I'm not sure if he was a planned part of the tour, but either way, it was convenient. However, I nearly could not pay him as I had almost run out of Nepali money, the money changer no longer accepted Traveler's Checks (despite there being an identical travelers' check to mine on the wall), and my Indian ATM card had completely failed to work in Nepal. I did have my emergency hundred US dollars left, though. It seemed a lot to change for just the last day or two, but I went ahead a converted even though the nice young man offered to do a "free tour".

The place, full of red brick palaces and pagodas decorated with wood or gold reminded me of Patan.

The guide walked me around and told me some of the stories about the pagodas (the one on the far right above is called Nyatapola, one of the tallest pagodas in the valley, and the pairs of stone statues increases in strength as you walk up.) We strolled along interlocking courtyards and alleys. We saw folk doing pottery which apparently this region is famous for. They had the kilns and everything right there in the square. I bought some Nepal coins from a street vendor for 400. My tour guide told me a few minutes later that I totally got ripped off (even though I had bargained the seller down.) I was like, "Well, thanks for telling me that NOW."

I wasn't overly impressed with the tour, but it was adequate. Later, it turned out that the coin seller glued the coins on the paper, which sort of beats the point of coins. Most of my Nepal coin collection now has a bunch of paper stuck to the back.

I was not allowed to go through the amazingly-carved door above. I think it was only for monks or something. But I got to see some of the reputed naughty sculptures hiding in plain sight on a few temples. Look specifically at the bottom carving. Scandalous!

Generally, what I enjoyed in Bhaktapur was what I enjoyed in Patan. Cool carved doorways and nifty wooden window frames.

My driver dropped my back off Pilgrim Hotel in Kathmandu, the same one I stayed in earlier and I gave him a tip.

Although the people at the hotel were generally friendly, they were kind of annoying in ways, too. They started telling me that one of the rooms didn't have hot water, then asked me what room I wanted (without actually telling me which one had no hot water.) The rooms were otherwise all the same to me. If one had sheets and towels that were actually bleached white and super clean, then I would have cared. I think I took the same room as last time and didn't bother attempting the shower since it was my last night anyway. Earlier in the day, they *made* me order food when I sat at one of the tables in the front porch dining area. It's not like there were a lot of patrons or anything, i.e. space that I was taking up. Also, there were two other people on their laptops in the same area pretty much the whole day, but I didn't see food in front of them. I was annoyed, but I finally ordered one of the cheaper items on the menu - chocolate pudding. It came after quite a while. It burned my tongue and didn't taste particularly good. I had a few bites before giving up. Then I wanted to pay and leave. The waiter took forever to re-appear then he wanted me to charge it to the room instead. I did NOT want to charge it to the room because my room was already paid for and I didn't want to have anything to remember when checking out the next morning. He was insistent and I was insistent (and very irritated because I hadn't wanted to the stupid pudding the first place, I had just wanted to sit somewhere and write in my journal for a bit. And now I was ready to leave.) Exasperated, I finally threw up my hands and started to walk away, then he decided to take my money.

For my last afternoon, I decided to explore the streets of Thamel in more detail and hopefully find Kathmandu's Durbar Square since I had missed it last time around. The weather was perfect!

I had a map. But my map was less detailed than Google's (below) which is less detailed than reality. In reality, the streets and alleys are narrow, all interlocking (no dead-ends like the map suggests), and at off-grid angles. Even looking at shadows to try to discern cardinal direction, it was near impossible to get one's bearings...

... which, thinking about it, was precisely what I wanted! I already knew I could not get too lost because major streets surrounded the mostly pedestrian area. Though, when I say 'mostly', it still means that motorcycles, scooters, and the occasional small car screamed through the throngs of people, honking all the way. The stroll would have been infinitely more enjoyable had I not had to jump out of the way every thirty seconds.

When I reached a major street, I realized I was near Durbar Square. A super kind Western Union employee broke some of my large bills (hard to get rid of) and then I stopped in a coffee shop called Himalayan Java to get a snack and use the internet. Three shopkeepers failed to connect my smartphone to the internet despite that others in the shop were having no trouble. Oh, well. Onto Durbar Square...

The square, on the southwest corner of the Thamel area was fairly small, but more colorful than the other Durbar Squares I'd been to.

After I wandered the square, I continued walking along the streets.

Although being completely lost can be fun for some time, I eventually hailed myself one of the many bicycle rickshaws riding through the streets. The old man spoke almost no English. All he had to go on was the hotel's business card, which I'm glad I happened to have on me. He stopped no less than three times to ask directions as he pedaled.

Being on the rickshaw was actually a nice way to get a more relaxed tour of the area. I was very surprised, though, just how far I was from my hotel when we finally arrived.

After resting a bit, I went big for dinner. I walked over to the expensive Thamel House restaurant. I think I missed the live show, but I still enjoyed the atmosphere, free gift, sampling of a very strong rice wine, and the generally excellent service. The food was quite nice as well. I gave them all the 50s I had left.

The next morning, the morning of my departure, the staff seemed to be being extra nice to me (as if they had known I had left them a 500-rupee ($5) tip in the room.) I had a sore throat and the sneezes, better at the end of the trip than the beginning. My taxi driver was an hour early, but he was cool with me partaking of breakfast first.

To my horror, the same guy from the pudding fiasco was the one serving my breakfast. I kind of hoped he wasn't going to spit in it or anything. He said, "You were very angry." And I apologized to him. On the menu, I had a choice of an American and Nepali style breakfast. After mediocre American-style in the past, I went for the Nepali. And what do you know, it was absolutely delicious and a perfect final Nepali meal. Three pieces of puri (small fried bread for dipping) with mild potato curry and an orange lassi. All with what sounded like Chinese Buddhist chanting in the background.

After that, we headed for the airport.

I bought a long postcard of Pokhara at the airport and waited for my flight back to Delhi to appear on the board. Despite the sometimes reputed inconsistency of flights, it was all good!