Weblog Around the World

We've arrived in Japan and are already almost leaving. We've posted a first update under Japan, another will follow later. It's an interesting country with even more interesting people. The language is sometimes a problem, but so far we managed to get around.

We spent our last days in Kathmandu, visiting a Hindu cremation area
and experiencing the Hindu Holi festival. See a shorter update this
time under Nepal.

We made it safely back to Kathmandu yesterday where we are now relaxing and realising what happened. We also had time to update the site, so you can now read updates and pictures under Nepal and Tibet. The stories are quite long, because so much interesting happened, we hope you don't get bored :-)

The situation is even worse than we expected. We hear bits and pieces
via people coming from the city. Local/national media is not saying
much about it and tell the situation is under control. At the moment
we're at Lhasa airport in a hotel and nothing serious is happening
here; we're safe. Just a lot of police, even watching over our
shoulder while we're trying to find news on the internet or typing
these messages.
This morning the police ordered this internet cafe to close, and they
even shut-off the power when they saw what we were doing. Now we came
in via the back door and are sitting in a sparsely lit room, surrouned
by local people smoking and playing network games.

Tomorrow we stay here and on Tuesday we fly back to Kathmandu. Too bad
we can't visit the city, but we realise the situation is too unsafe to
go there. We'll post more messages when we're back in Kathmandu.

You may have seen something in the news about the critical situation in
Lhasa these days. Monks and Tibetans are protesting against the Chinese
and it's no longer peaceful.
We were planning to go to Lhasa today, but that doesn't seem possible.
Our plan is now to go to the airport and see if there is a safe
possibility to go into Lhasa the next few days.
Our flight back to Kathmandu is on Tuesday, until then, we hope the
situation improves. It would be very disappointing not to see Lhasa,
but on the other hand it's also interesting to see what's happening and
how the Chinese government is dealing with it in the media (saying not
much is happening, we know better!)

We've arrived in Gyantse, a city with a beautiful monastery. But our
guide told us today that the political situation in Lhasa is very tense
at the moment and it's not sure if we can go there tomorrow. But we'll
hear more tonight and hopefully continue our trip tomorrow. In the
meantime we're enjoying the scenery, culture, people and the company of
our group.

Here's a short update, because we haven't had time yet to post the
longer one with pictures. Yesterday we came back from a few very
exciting days in Pokhara and Chitwan, you'll read more about that in
about a week. And this morning we left for Tibet, where we were
accepted to enter after numerous checks and border formalities. It's
cold again, but the scenery is beautiful. Till next week!

There is so much to tell about Nepal, Everest and our experiences, that
we split it up in 2 new stories. Under Nepal you can find an update
with pictures about our Everest trekking and another about Nepal in
modern times. The pictures are now in the right order (thanks Os!),
that's much better.
By now we've moved from Kathmandu to Pokhara, to relax for a few days.
It's much more cleaner, quieter and beautiful here than in crazy
Kathmandu. Next week we go to Tibet for a week. Have fun!

But what we did do, you'll read and see here within the next few days.
We're back in Kathmandu, taking a rest, recovering from the heavy
trekking.