Another fascinating day in this bustling and crazy city. We started off with a wild 6km taxi ride across town to see the Bouddhanath Stupa, the biggest stupa in Nepal. It apparently serves as the focus for the exiled Tibetan community here. Noone knows exactly when it was built, but it is in writings as far back as the 15th century. One walks clockwise around a stupka, and spins the drums that are all along the side. Each drum contains a prayer book, and if you spin it one time you say 1000 prayers. The words of the ubiquitous buddist chant are engraved on the sides of the drum. The stupka is in a very nice, calm square, and surrounded by some of the nicer tourist shops we have seen. We also climbed up in one of the surrounding buildings to get a nice few from on high.

Another wild taxi ride to get into town, this time directly to the bike store. The shop had really done a lot of work and our vintage mountain bikes were starting to look like they could make the trip. We inspected everything, tested them out, inventoried all the spare parts we were getting, and paid the bill. They are going to be packed for us and picked up in the morning, just before we are picked up on the way to the airport. After a quick stop to pick up the sleeping bags at the mountaineering closet....er store... we went to lunch.

Restaurant meals are a LONG affair here. You can choose between Nepali, Tibetan, Indian, and Chinese cuisine and all that I have had so far has been great. But everything is made from scratch after you order, so it easily takes an hour to get served. However, the food is delicious and noone has gotten sick yet....knock on wood!! And to give you an idea of the prices here, 8 of us had a nice lunch with drinks (including some beers) for the equivalent of 12 Euros (17 dollars). That is the TOTAL for eight people!

Next we started walking towards the western edge of town and the monkey temple. Along the way, we ordered some custom embroidered Tshirts of our adventure, to be picked up upon our return. The monkey temple is another Buddhist Stupka, this one high on a hill outside of town. It is called the monkey temple because it is overrun with wild monkeys. It is a very steep climb up, but on top you are rewarded with wonderul views of the Katmandu skyline. It was definitely worth the climb.

My GPS helped us find our way home through the serpentine streets. I stupidly didn't take it along yesterday and we sure missed it! The power was out again upon our return back to the hotel, so we are packing our bags by the dim battery light. Tomorrow morning we have a 7am pickup to go to the airport and fly off to Lhasa. We are only at 4000 feet right now, so tomorrow is a huge jump to 12,000 feet. That will be a big test and we'll be taking it very easy for a few days.

Below are a selection of pictures of the day: negotiating our taxi fare, the big stupka, a collection of street scenes, and scenes from the monkey palace. Note all the women filling their cans at the public water source. Note also the worthless dogs. They lie all over the street like that, never moving, like they are dead. I haven't seen a dog stand up since I've been here!