Celebrity friends in Kathmandu

In preparation for our travels Amy and I spent a long time watching travel documentaries which celebrate our contemporary travel heroes. People like Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, whose gruelling motorcycle rides across the world in Long Way Round and Long Way Down, are our generation's Marco Polos. And it just so happened that last night, we were lucky enough to find Charley Boorman and Russ Malkin (the producer of the 'Long Way' series') staying at our hotel in Kathmandu!

Russ and Charley had just arrived in Kathmandu and they told us that they are filming a new travel documentary called 'By Any Means' which will follow Charley as he attempts to travel from Ireland to Syndey by (ahem) any means necessary (and avoiding air transport). Unfortunately, they've hit the same problems as us with Tibet, China and Burma (we can't go to Tibet because the Chinese are refusing to let foreigners into the country, we can't fly to Chengdu in China because of the earthquakes and we can't fly to Burma because of the cyclone), so they're having to fly to somewhere north of Hong Kong.

There's a photo of us grinning like star-struck idiots with Charley and Russ. You can catch them both (and witness the moments before and after they met us in Kathmandu) on By Any Means which is due to be aired on BBC2 in Sept this year (although this could change). Don't they have nice smiles?

Bye! We're off to hunt for the Yeti...

We're off bright and early tomorrow morning to catch our second Yeti Airways flight, this time to the tiny mountain village of Lukla where we will begin our 6 day trek through the Everest region.

Needless to say, we're both very excited about this. It's by far and away the longest trek I will have done - I just hope I'm up to it! Ha - if I can do Walk the Wight three years in a row I can handle anything!

We'll be out of touch now until next Wednesday but hope to return with some pretty amazing photographs so watch this space.......

Nepalis strike again!

This is a picture of our Dutch friend Vincent with some political protesters at a small border town in Nepal. You see, we just had a very frustrating encounter with the political maelstrom of this small Kingdom (soon to become Republic). Now that the newly elected Maoists are in power, we were hoping to avoid all of this unrest, but Nepal is just not that simple.

So we crossed the border near Darjeeling into Nepal, psyched up for a 16 hour bus ride from the border to Kathmandu only to be told by immigration that a strike had been called that morning. A senior Maoist leader had been killed in an accident on a bus when he fell out if its doorway and was run over. The family of the deceased are currently demanding 1.5m Nepali Rupees from the bus company for funeral costs and have blockaded the road from this border town into the rest of Nepal until they are paid.

So having just entered the country we were stranded in a tiny border town with nowhere to go. Luckily we found a hotel room and we stayed in this miserable, dusty town last night hoping that the strike would be lifted this morning and we could catch the first bus out of town (at 4.30am).

We rose at 4am and threw on our backpacks and headed out on to the dark streets only to find out that the strike was still going on and that things had taken an ugly turn (or so we were told) - the protesters had kidnapped a bus driver to increase their bargaining power.

We decided, with this indefinate situation on our doorstep (literally) , to splash out and catch the first flight to Kathmandu (on Yeti Airlines!). The only problem was that with no cars, buses or motorbikes being allowed on the roads, we had to burden two poor bicycle-rickshaw drivers with a two hour ride with us and our bags on the back to the airport. Poor fellas.

Anyway, our 16 hour bus ride was replaced with a 25 minute flight (with excellent service) through the Himalayas and we're now in Kathmandu and are very excited by the prospect of affordable wine.