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Thankfully, as tends to be the way here, plans changed and we have had an extra couple of days recovering and relaxing in Kathmandu. This has mainly involved enjoying lots of good food, the odd beer and catching up with emails and the world at large.

Before our legs fully recovered from climbing, we foolishly visited Swayambunath, or Monkey Temple, another big Buddhist stupa on a hill above Kathmandu – the stairs approaching this were very steep and numerous. However, our mountain training in Helambu paid off and we were rewarded with fantastic views over the Kathmandu valley. Another very important Buddhist site, they have certainly gone to town with the prayer flags – the flags have prayers written on them and as they flap in the wind the prayers are supposed to be dispersed.

On the way back down, we seemed to take a wrong turning somewhere along the lines. This brought us down to a footbridge crossing the Bagmati river in one of the poorest areas of Kathmandu. All down the river banks are piles of rotting rubbish and we couldn't hold our breaths long enough to get away from the stench. The path took us into a shambles of huts and ramshackle buildings, where we lost our bearings slightly. In Melamchi, which is a buddhist village, we didn't eat any meat for the whole month (we may have told you this story but our neighbour in Cardiff once got chatting to our plumber and asked what work we were having done on our house - when the reply was that we were installing solar panels, our neighbour remarked “oh yes, they're vegetarians”... in fact we are not, we do eat meat occasionally but not often). The sight that we came across here pretty much convinced us to turn vegetarian for good. We had unwittingly stumbled across a buffalo slaughter house just at the time that a truck was collecting carcasses – the truck was overflowing with rotting skulls and other debris. We ran past as quickly as possible, but the image has remained with us for a long time.

We have stocked up on new books for the next month's project - there are some great second hand book shops in Kathmandu and if you return books you get 50% back on the price. So we have spent many an hour browsing round these. Our favourite shops so far are one with a fairly large bloke in a vest (bit of a Rab C lookie-likey!) who gets you to write down the name of a book and then he picks up his laser pen and points to your book... so far he has never failed! There is another very good shop, but the bloke in there tends to follow you round to check you don't swipe anything; this would not be a problem apart from his flatulence! Been speeding through books here and enjoying getting back to reading a bit more; so far we have been chalking up the Everest/mountaineering dramas and making our way through Carl Hiassen's back catalogue amongst others - any good book recommendations greatfully appreciated.

We also managed to squeeze in a trip to the cinema to see Transformers II. It was a fairly long walk there, and had to pass by a Maoist demonstration on the street which was only small and nothing too concerning. The cinema is quite new and modern, so we got ourselves some drinks and popcorn and went to enjoy the show. We were right in the middle of all the action (not much else to the film) when it was stopped and all the lights came on - haven't had an interval in the cinema for a wee while. After this brief interlude the film got going again, only to be plunged into darkness half an hour later when there was a power cut. It took a few minutes before they managed to get started again but the rest of the film passed without any further interruptions.

On our last evening in Kathmandu, we had bought ourselves a beer and snacks to have on the roof garden before dinner. When we got up there we were amused to find a monkey eating a bag of popcorn at the other end. Just as we were settling down to enjoy our treat, the monkey got up and nonchalantly walked over to us. As he got closer, we tried to shoo him away but regardless of our stamping, clapping and shouting he didn't seem at all bothered and showed us he meant business by bearing his teeth. He clearly knew exactly what he was after, climbed up on the table grabbed our packet of crisps and sauntered off looking quite pleased with himself. Whilst this was perhaps a little humiliating; on reflection we would rather lose a packet of crisps than get bitten by a scabby monkey and were relieved he took the crisps and not the beer or nuts or camera or laptop all of which were within his grasp.

Afterwards we decided to make the most of our last night in town and splashed out on a lovely pizza and a bottle of red wine (first for 5 weeks!).

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