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I swore to god I will never ever do it again after my bad experience in India in 2006. But, no risk no fun. Landed in Kathmandu I passed the pre-paid taxi desk and went straight to the local drivers as they where offering much better deals. With 2 American girls in my shadow we found a driver who drove us into Thamel/Kathmandu for around about 1 Euro. Well, for a 30 min drive it’s even in Kathmandu a great deal. Deal, that’s the word which means in Nepal almost the same than in India. I knew it from my 6 weeks here in Nepal in 2006 and was waiting for the start of the conversation in the car.
Sure it started soon and I shut my mouth and followed the conversation between the 2 girls and the 2 Nepali driver in the front. I must say, sometimes you are lucky and they show you the best deals and places in town, but the chances are pretty rare. This time I was lucky and they dropped us out at a nice little guest house, the “Pilgrim Garden Guest House” in the heard of Thamel. Today I spent the entire day with my Nepali family, for who I/we collected the money during the year. We have not seen us for 3 years and the moment when they visited me at the guest house was very intense to all of us. We spent the rest of the day at the Swayambunath Stupa, which  is better known as the Monkey Temple as there are holy monkeys living in parts of the temple in the north-west. Before we climbed up the steps to the temple we had lunch at Ashis’s and Yangzee’s grandma, Nima’s mother (Nima, the father of the kids who died last year).
As an Nepali tradition I had to drink some bowls of “Dumba”, the traditional Sherpa beer from the mountains. It’s made with hot water and a strange seed which only grows in Nepal. You have to drink it warm and with a special metal straw, which has one end squezzed together that the seeds can’t get up to your mouth. Tomorrow I will go to the house of the family and Mina will cook traditional Nepali food for me and I’m sure – a biiiig bowl of Dumba.