2010-07-24 27 85

The Place

Who Went

Felix Dance - by mountain bike.

Expedition

Felix Dance

I've been staying in an orphanage for the past three weeks in the hills east of Kathmandu, but there hasn't been much internet out here so I'd been neglecting my geohashing obligations. Luckily, just a day or so ago, I asked Talex to message me if there's an accessible one, and sure enough I got a message last night informing me that a geohash lay on a highway west of Nepal, only 24 kms from me, the very next day.

I was still umming and ahhing about it the next morning when I woke up at my usual time of 5am, especially because Saturday is these orphan's only day off a week and they wanted to take me on a walk to a local Buddhist Monastery (I had actually already been a few times). In the end, geohashing won, as it always seems to do, so I crammed down some breakfast and set off around 8:30 on my Giant Mountain Bike (my one from home!).

Unfortunately, this geohash was on the exact opposite side of Kathmandu to the orphanage, so I had to negotiate the absolutely nuts traffic right through this awkward metropolis. An hour of crazy traffic, sacred cows, boys flying kites and stupid amounts of dust thrown up from road construction got me out of town and into the hills. Another hour of slow progress ascending the cruelly steep hills surrounding Kathmandu, and admiring the view, got me to within 100m of the geohash. I quickly parked my bike and walked off into the paddy fields.

Estimated total ride: About 65 kms, but hard to tell Time of hash: 10:26am Total time for geohash: about 4 hours.