Arrival in Kathmandu

Arriving in Kathmandu is an assault on all your senses, in a wondrous, glorious chaos. It’s as if you have been dropped into a maelstrom of activity that is travelling in all directions. The sounds, colours, smells attacking you from every direction. I love it here.

To say the least, the taxi journey from the from the airport is one epic adventure in what can only be described as a living obstacle course.

It would seem that the initial skill set required to drive in Kathmandu is:

1. Expert use of your horn – whether entering, exiting, turning, stopping, accelerating, reversing – the horn is an absolute necessity.
2. A cat like ability to dodge and weave through a dis-jointed mass of moving obstacles, of which half are pedestrians. I would point out at this stage that any attempt to cross a road is akin to playing a real life game of Frogger.
3. More guts than sense.

As with most taxi drivers, the ones here are highly skilled in the are of squeezing into the smallest of spaces – and they know ‘exactly’ how wide their cars are – to within an inch of a gnats bullock!

It’s exhilarating to sit in the back seat and weave through the streets of this beautiful city, and I can only hope for many more days to explore and wander this great city until my feet hurt.