I slept as long as I could today. I felt I could give that to my self after the long journey here. Woke up and then took a small breakfast in the lobby before I decided that it was time to “take on” Kathmandu the touristic way. But first I went to the bus company that I will take to Pokhara (prenounsed “Påckará” in Swedish) and I found out that it’s about 600 meters from my hostel, so thtat’s just perfect. Then I don’t have to take a taxi there early on Tuesday morning. Bought the ticket today as well, so now I have that one. So on Tuesday it will be a 200 km trip due west for about 7 hours.

  After that I started walking. And then I walked for constantly (with a short stop at lunch) until around 15.00 in the afternoon. So that’s about 4-5 hours of walking. My hostel is in the Thamel-zone, which is a really touristic, because everywhere there are small boutiques for trekkers and a lot of adventure companies that are ready to bring you where ever you want to go here in Nepal, and north of the historical city centre.

  When I arrived at the historical city centre, which is a UNESCO World Heritage-site I got my self a guide (or the guide convinced me I needed him), and I let him guide me around for half an hour. It just feels so amazing to be here finally. Just walk around along the streets, take in all the smell from the streets. From the smell of spices to the smell of garbage. It’s just the way it is here. Kathmandu is well known for the bad air here, and I use my scarf to cover my mouth and nose as much as I can and I’m not the only one doing that.

  I’m feeling so honoured to be here in Nepal. In one way (the economic aspect of it), Nepal and Kathmandu is the total opposite of Sweden, and then I do know that Kathmandu is the economically stronger part of the country. The contrast is so huge it’s hard to explain. I’ve seen this in a way before, when I was in Afghanistan with the military, so it’s not that I’m not used to it. But looking at the beautiful people here and try to grasp the feeling of the city is amazing. People yelling their offers trying to sell their merchandise to potential customers who pass by.

  I try to look on the city with my “thesis view”, and I try to get an understanding of the situation of the infrastructure here. I’m not doing the field study with a focus on urban areas, so in a way it’s wrong to look here, but at the same time what I see here in Kathmandu can work as a good perspective for the future field study. The first I noticed was the power shortages that comes and goes here. The hostel has it’s own diesel generator so they have power, but that diesel adds its’ pollution to the rest of the city, so I wouldn’t say that it’s a good situation in the long term. Actually I saw a light pole with some solar cells on it earlier. Was a bit surprised, because in my own vanity I didn’t expect to see that here.

  Photos of today is just from my own city tour here in the historical centre of Kathmandu. I figure that eight photos are enough and you would get tired of looking at all my photos from today. I’ve also taken some short movies that you can look via the links below. Click on the links and the videos should open in a new window. It’s just so you perhaps can get a feeling of the city. And no, I’m not a video-person, but I hope you can better understand what I see around me here in Kathmandu.

Video 1 (4,5 Mb, 26 sec): Roof top view over the Durbar Square, the historical centre of Kathmandu.
Video 2 (5,4 Mb, 29 sec): Street life from the Indra Chowk towards Asan Tole.

  If you can’t watch the videos in the browser, right click over them and save them to your computer. Then you can use VLC-player or some other software to see them.

  Update at 21:42 Took a walk in the heart of the Thamel area and just looked around amongst all the tourist-streets. Heard both Swedish, Dutch, German and English there. Ate a nice Indian dinner at a restaurant, and then took a slow walk back home to the hostel.