We’ve been here a few days now and have had plenty of time to soak up the atmosphere and culture and view it’s beautiful surroundings.  Chitwan is so laid back it’s almost horizontal – it’s is truly amazing.

As we eat our breakfast we watch the locals feed and water their animals, including elephants, by the river. As we walk around we get a sense of no urgency.  A local was telling us that most people here only work 3–4 hours a day, the rest is for chilling. Everywhere we go there are people playing cards, sleeping, drinking tea, fishing etc. – what a life!  Money means very little to these people – peace of mind is number one – maybe some of this will rub off on us by the time we leave.

Major dilemma – to drink or not to drink, that is the question?

So far, it’s been expensive in relative terms to consume alcohol, it varies between £1 and £2 per bottle depending on the country.  Here it’s £1.90 and that’s local beer, not Carlsberg or Heineken etc.  Every other night we treated ourselves to 4–5 bottles (shared) but it’s eating into our budget big time!

We’ve found a solution – local rum with coke! – £1.60 a quarter bottle, more than enough of an evening. We had some last night and it’s pretty intoxicating but cheap.

UPDATE: upon wakening this morning, we’ve decided against our rum strategy, we felt very dehydrated – back to beer then. Maybe we should setup a sponsor portal on the website so people back home can sponsor us a few bevies :-).

Please be patient with our postings here in Nepal, we are experiencing some difficulty uploading due to the sheer lack of bandwidth.  For you semi-techies out there – especially those of you who have come to expect a decent internet connection at home – think of us here in Nepal where the fastest connection in town yesterday was 96kbps – wow!

It’s bonkers – there are two cafes, both say that the internet is fastest at 7am and 7pm – supposedly 128kbps but it varies considerably – but we know from experience that the town’s electricity goes off a 7pm most nights – that’s why it’s so fast – nobody is using the damn thing!

We have made some changes to the way we upload posts, previously we used Windows Live Writer and, when uploaded, provided users with the ability to expand the pictures. Like all Microsoft products, it has let us down badly (if you’re reading Bill or Bob or whoever the new guy is) and we’ve now switched to a programme called blogjet which does not provide a function to expand the photos when clicked. 

FEEDBACK REQUIRED: Is this a real problem for you guys – do you expand the pictures or are you just happy to receive posts? I can manage with WLR, but it’s a pain in the ass uploading, it takes forever and mostly crashes or times out!

Finally, just a quick thank you again to all of you who have been commenting and e-mailing – we love receiving them – keep them coming.  I’m sure you understand, we cannot reply to each comment, we’d be on the internet all day!

Thank you!

Davey