Kathmandu 25th June

Well, we got here intact but I don't think you should hold your breath for regular updates - the internet here is slooooow! Don't even know how long it took with all the time differences, the time here is a random 5 hours minus 15 minutes ahead which is totally confusing. There are 11 of us in the group, mix of ages and nationalities but I think we'll get on fine, we're certainly well-covered medically as there's another doctor and a dentist on the trip (we might have already talked work a bit, but it was kind of inevitable).

Last night we had beer and curry and it rained. This morning we had a rather lengthy orientation meeting which took two hours and could easily have taken about 20 minutes, but they were, let's say, very thorough. We then went to a couple of temples, one Hindu where they were cremating bodies alongside the river, and one Buddhist where we found some delightful midget monks who insisted on having their pictures taken with us. We gave them some money of course, but then the other doctor and I were accosted by some Indian tourists who wanted to have their picture taken with us - so we had a queue of Indian men lining up to pose with us! Hmmm, maybe we should have charged them. Had another curry for lunch and this afternoon have come into the tourist area for a bit of shopping (tat) and internet, but I don't think broadband has yet reached Nepal as each page takes about 5 minutes to load.

Anyway, tomorrow we fly to Tibet s not sure when the next update will be - so you'll have to watch this space!