Kathmandu! (Is Not a Shop)

Short Version:
Kathmandu has its own filth

Long Version:
Tribhuvan International Airport is made of red bricks. That was unexpected.

The queue for visas was long. Two women appeared at intervals and walked up and down the line, stapling photos to application forms for people. One was lovely, the other scary. Pretty sure the scary one deliberately put the staple in the middle of the Puppet forehead.

Visas acquired, it was outside, where a man holding a PHARO sign bundled us into a van and drove us through various bits of Kathmandu to our hotel. There was a lot to take in - we'd been warned that we were going to be hard-pressed to determine whether buildings were in process of being built or knocked down, and that was not only true but applied to almost every building we saw, although not the Royal Palace, where in 2001 Crown Prince Dipendra massacred nine of his family before putting an end to himself as well (his uncle, Gyanendra, succeeded the throne, and remained in power through to the end of the monarchy - replaced by a form of democracy - in 2006). The palace is now a museum.

We also passed the most polluted river we've ever seen. Holy heck, the water was FILTHY! Dark grey and semi-solid, with chunks. Ewwwwww!

And then the streets got cleaner, the number of pale faces in the hordes of people we were passing increased, and then we arrived at the International Guesthouse, where we were staying for a couple of nights before setting off to walk around/up/down some hills...