Ok, so my plan to get up early in the morning and then walk out to the Swayambhunath temple was spoiled. I slept until nine once again and then I walked out there. I didn’t climb up the hill, but plan to do that tomorrow. What stroke me while doing the walk out to the temple was all the garbage everywhere, especially in the river and at the river banks.

  I saw all the garbage yesterday as well, but when I crossed the Vishnumati river west of the city centre the foul smell hit me like a rock in the face. I wear my scarf over my mouth and nose mostly when I walk around here to perhaps stop a bit of the pollution, but the smell isn’t stopped by a scarf. I’m used to that type of smell since my time with the army on peacekeeping operations, and we are never near that at all in Sweden. That foul smell mixes up with the smell of new cooked food and spices, so smells a bit weird so to say.

  Was on my way to set my foot on a dead rat today again. Yesterday I saw to quite dead rats here, and today I saw two more. As coming from Sweden it’s not “normal” to see dead rats, but here it’s another type of life. Everything is just so different.

  The most difficult thing is to say no to all shop owners, beggers, and all others who in some sort want to offer you help for money or sell you things. I’ve got to the stage that I just ignore them. It feels so hard, but I can’t stop and say “Namaste” (“Hello / Good day” in Nepalese) to everybody and decline their offer in a polite way. Then I would spend my entire day doing just that and I would have any time over. They do it because the see the possibility to earn some money of course. It feels bad just to ignore them, as many people are so polite towards me, but I do it. The only thing it’s not difficult to say no to is the people who have asked me if I wanted to by “magic mushrooms” or hashish. I don’t need those sort of things to enjoy my life, so no thank you.

  In the afternoon I passed Kathmandu Environmental Education Project (KEEP), which is an NGO with focus on educating trekkers, travellers, and the tourist industry on the vulnerability of the natural environment. Wanted to see if they worked with anything with sustainability questions, and I got some information, and number to a project not far from Pokhara. So something done for the thesis today. And I bought some iodine tablets to purify water with. That’s much better than buying water in a plastic bottle, because of the almost non existing handling of garbage here in Nepal. I have bought some bottles of water here so far, but plan to stop with that now.

Video 3 (5,8 Mb, 35 sec): Right in the heart of Thamel tourist district in the evening.

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