I'm on the Top of the World

Most places have a national snack, Spain- Tapas, Italy- Cicchetti, Greece – Meze, India Pakora/ Samosa and England Pork Scratchings and 65 different flavours of crisps that rarely resemble what’s on the packet. Walking past the many food places here we kept seeing advertised Mo Mo’s had no idea what these were so only one way to find out. We’d gone out for an early dinner, these 05:00 starts really are not conducive to late nights and wandered past a few decent looking places, to be honest spoilt for choice here but wanted something reasonably close to the hotel. What again is nice here is the lack of hassle when walking past a place or even stopping looking in and picking up a menu. Happy Hour, free popcorn, an open fire-pit ideal as the temperature overnight does drop quickly and a good menu, which on closer inspection had the aforementioned Mo Mo’s did it for us in the end.

Our waiter spoke excellent English as do most people outside of the UK!, he kindly explained these were a bit like Dim-Sum, wheat shell with filling in the middle, plenty of option including Veg and the interestingly named Buff , some bad images sprang to mind until looking through the rest of the menu it was then clear this was Buffalo. Ordered up and a generous portion of about 10 each arrived, mine upgraded slightly with some extra heat, they were excellent and to be honest enough for a meal by themselves! Perfect also for on-the hoof eating although we’ve not seen much of that in these parts but post bar-time closing it could be a different matter!

This morning we’ve got a bit of time before our flight back to Kathmandu – we decided that the seven hour return road trip wasn’t going to be fun second time around so it’s all aboard the 24 seater on Yeti Airlines for the 25 min flight back. In the meantime it’s only right I thought to give the Gurkha Museum a visit which doesn’t look too far away. Bypassing the Hotel's special price taxi we go off-piste and haggle locally and get the price down by 50%, all good except he takes us to the wrong museum! sounds very interesting an ordinarily would have done this one as well but time is limited! A quick re-route and we're at the Gurkha Museum , I know very little really about these brave people aside from some unwarranted hassle they had a few years back about Pensions! Inside is fascinating plotting their history, involvement and considerable support in conflicts over the last 200 + years, it really was a superb visit.

We scoot back to the car to get back to pack and head off the Airport, it's only a short ride across town but not really got a great deal of time. The Airport is pretty small to say the least and go to check-in only to be told if we want to join the next flight which leaves in 10 mins rather than ours in an hr or so's time. Possibly the quick security check ever i.e. none really but find out my rucksack has a tag but no security stamp on it - a complete no-fly everywhere in India. I then go back to the now empty security screening area but found the stamp and ink-pad so stamped my own, as it happened my wife's also not stamped the the airport woman just shrugged her shoulders!.

Plane arrives and going back out it's full, all 26 of us, these planes shuttle back and forth to various small towns and cities , they provide a more frequent service than our Sunday Train service to London! It's going to be cosy and only one person allowed to board at a time, the Stewardess is also miniature size and suspect over a size 6 would not get a job on the wonderfully named Yeti Airlines. We have bagged seats on the left hand side for the 25 min flight as recommended for the best views and sure enough once we had cantered up the runway and got airborne it was spectacular. The peaks in the blue picture really are the Himalayan mountains which rise higher than the clouds.

We even get fed , a few sweets , bag of Yeti Peanuts and a choice of three different drinks , shame on you BA, EasyJet , Ryanair. A slightly bumpy landing which would be fun in more challenging conditions and we're off the plane onto the bus into the main Airport area dropping on some airport staff on the way. Final Destination not even in the Airport Terminal , everyone just gets off the bus and wanders off into the distance . It certainly beats a 6-7hr car journey back!