October 23, 2009

 Slept in ‘til about ten o’clock this morning.  The brothers went with me to catch a ride with the guys back up to View Tower to play guitar today. The motorcycle ride was scary as hell! The roads are very winding and we are going up-hill the entire time.  It’s hard not to think to yourself; “wow, I’m in the middle of nowhere on a motorcycle, driving 60mph up a mountain”. We arrive back at View Tower around 11:30am. My brothers and I just kind of looked at each other with shock and awe, surprised that we made it there in one piece. The Nepal kids were absolutely amazing! Apparently, they looked up my website since meeting the night before and in their eyes I became an overnight celebrity, just for having a website.

This might be my favorite part of the trip…. out came the acoustic guitar. Let me back up a minute and explain that it was no easy feat to bring the guitar up to View Tower. Imagine each motorcycle having two people, and the one lucky passenger getting to hold on to the guitar, not just from the hotel, but from his home 2 hours away in Katmandu. It was a good old-fashioned song swap. Liam, one of the kids, played mostly pop and rock music. I finally convinced him to play some original Nepal music, and I enjoyed it very much. Each song was short, but had a good beat to it. You could tell pop/rock had a major influence on these kids. After a short time the kids decided it was time for us to move to a new location. One of my brothers, who will go unnamed, asked if the next location had a bathroom. They said “sure, no problem”, so we hopped back on the motorcycles and head part way back down the mountain for a new view of the Himalayas and some more guitar picking. The “bathroom” so to speak, was nothing more than a hole in the ground surrounded by plenty of military forces. Needless to say, I am 99.99% sure that a machine gun was trained on us the entire time. Said “brother” was not comfortable enough to use the “facilities”, his stomach was a little upset from the local food. One of the kids was nice enough to drive him back to the hotel while the rest of us stayed and played guitar until about 4pm that afternoon. It was absolutely magical and a moment I will never forget. (Side note: We stopped to get a snack at one point and one of the most popular is dried ramen noodles crunched up in a bag with it’s seasoning poured on top. Delicious…) what a day?!

Back at Club Himalaya it was time to book another hotel in Katmandu. IT IS the peak of tourist season here and 99% of all the hotels are full. We did finally get one booked at a place called Shanker Hotel in Katmandu. To give you an idea of how expensive it is we are putting 4 beds in one room….we will see how that works out. It is also noteworthy to mention that Joel thought that it would be funny to cross from balcony to balcony in his boxers only to realize he was being filmed by a friendly Asian stalker…now that’s funny!