Magnet
Here i am in New York. I was thinking, you know, I might see some celebrities, playground of the rich and famous after all, but it has been considerably ridiculous how many i have seen. Here is the list, so far:
Robert De Niro
Christopher Walken
David Bowie
Faye Dunaway
Kevin Bacon
Whoopi Goldberg
Minnie Driver
Norman Mailer (author)
Trump's Daughter
Brian Cox
and yesterday i saw Josh Hartnett filming a movie (this one http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470679/) in the street about 2 blocks from where i am staying. I stood and marvelled at the filming and the cameras and the process for about 2 hours.

So who knows who it will be tomorrow. I have photos of all of these sightings as well, even if they are in the distance.

So even if it is bucketing with rain outside in New York right now i can always look at my photos of Robert De Niro and know i was in his precense.

Everybody stop working, doing assignments, etc; go overseas!

Love David

Not much to be said for the last couple of days; pretty much all I've done is laze around! I changed Guest Houses this morning so i'm now only paying about 80 cents a night, i thought that was something to note! I did however realize that i missed out on a couple of crucial things to say about my trek, the first being the flight into Lukla. This was exciting to say the least! It's this tiny plane that seats about 12 people, 'Yeti Airlines', the door doesn't close properly, just a kind of latch and sitting next to the door was quite nerve-racking as it didn't seem to quite fit properly, so you could see outside through the cracks! They do however serve the best sweets! Hard boiled chocolate eclair flavour! So the actual flight was fine, amazing scenery...obviously! The best/scariest part, depending on your viewpoint, was the landing. We dropped in height incredibly quickly and it suddenly went pitch black, you couldn't even see out the windows, then we shifted position and you could see that we were completely amoung the mountains, you could almost reach out and touch them. Then we saw the airstrip ahead which is 180m long, a huge drop-off on one end and he other end is a brick wall. Not much room for error, oh and the strip is actually angled up slightly. So it was a little scary, but really really exciting! We landed and pretty much straight away swung off to the right to a little flat area and stopped. Good pilots! So that was pretty cool.

The other thing i wanted to write about were the lodges we stayed in, or rather, the rooms. All the places we stayed were twin beds so i shared with Suzanne the whole time, but if you can imagine all the horror films you've ever seen, the room that the 'killer' always keeps his victims. Those were our bedrooms! It was really quite freaky, no lights, sometimes the walls were made of dirt and the floors weren't quite finished, long corridors. Greg took great delight in talking about various horror films before i went to bed so i got really freaked out! I mean, the lodges were nice and the rooms weren't so bad, but when it started to get dark...well i guess our imaginations got caught up in it too! In a fair few of the places too it was just like we were sleeping outside, just with a piece of wood over our heads! But all the same it was fine!

So i just walked outside from where i'm sitting to find a toilet and someone pointed out this massive Marijuana plant growing wild, then i looked around and it's pretty common. Crazy!

Until next time...i have some more lazing around to do!

Love Katie.

More photos and more to come when i get the latest ones onto CD. The first one is of Patan Durbar Square in Kathmandu. (Kathmandu is made up of three squares like this). And the second is of Boudnath Stupa, again in Kathmandu.

Hello! So right now I’m in Pokhara, which although I haven’t seen much of yet, seems really beautiful. Set on a lakeside with the mountains rising around you (so I have been told, the clouds are too low today). So I will go exploring shortly, since finishing the trek and going to Chitwan I’ve adopted a ‘take-it-easy’ lifestyle, but I have plenty on time!

Chitwan was beautiful and a really nice change from the hustle and bustle of Kathmandu. The landscape is amazing, very lush and green, rice paddies and Banana trees everywhere. It’s a lot flatter than around Kathmandu, the area is known as the ‘Terai’, lots of farmland and terraced rice paddies. Also, the buildings themselves were interesting, there are the usual but also a lot of homes made from Elephant grasses and mud. It was so so hot down there too, about 35 degrees when I got there and quite humid. Not as hot as Aus sometimes I know but compared to last week being below 0 it was quite a difference!…I became a nice shade of brown…depending on your interpretation of ‘Brown’!

When I arrived in Sauraha (the town, Chitwan is the area) I got picked up by the manager of the Guesthouse I would be staying at in a jeep, so we bumped the 3 km’s back to the lodge, which was beautiful, nice gardens and pagoda’s to hang out in and all for about AUS $7!

So while there I went for a canoe ride, saw some Croc’s (none man-eating thankfully as we were quite close, though I took this with a pinch of salt!), then to the ‘Elephant Breeding Centre’. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this, but I went anyway and it was as expected. Great to see the Elephants as they are such amazing, beautiful creatures, but it was so sad to see them in this unnatural environment. There were around twenty I guess, including the calves, and although the calves were able to run around in the enclosure, the adults were chained up to posts. Some of them with only one ankle tied, some had both front feet chained together and when I asked why this was I was told it was because those particular Elephants were more aggressive. It was quite sad, I didn’t enjoy it and just wanted to leave, although it was fun to watch the calves playing, they were play fighting and throwing dirt around, then they would come up to me and try to grab my feet with their trunks. It was nice to watch!

I also went to see the Elephant bathing. The village I was staying in was situated along side of a river, so most of the lodges backed onto the river and I could just walk out the back gate and watch the Elephants bath. So my guide took me down to watch and I had heard of people being able to swim with the Elephants but I got the impression that I would just be watching. Anyway we got there and suddenly I was asked if I could swim and to get on the back of an Elephant! So I got to swim with them, which was really exciting! They lift you with their trunks and throw you off into the water and shower you with their trunks! It was really fun and the area around the river is just like being on a beach, nice (ish) water, pagoda’s with thatched roofs, reclining chairs etc. So naturally I spent the rest of my day there watching the Elephants and drinking tea! I met a couple of guys from Germany and Belgium there too, so at the moment I’m traveling with them. I also took an Elephant-back Safari and all I can say is don’t do it and if you do go with friends. I was on for about 10mins and decided it was a really bad idea. I felt awful for doing it, that poor Elephant, but I couldn’t get off as we were in the middle of the Jungle and it’s quite dangerous in there. Apparently it’s really hard to see any wildlife, but we saw about seven (including the young ) of the endangered one-horned Rhino, we got up really close so that was nice. Didn’t see anything else except Stag and birds. Only four people went (that’s all that can fit) and you sit on this square wooden platform type thing. It’s really really uncomfortable, plus I was squished next to this (excuse my choice of words) fat, smelly guy who spent most of the time on his mobile, smoking, leaning back on me and pushing me into the thorned bushes. So I just got really grumpy unfortunately! At the end the Elephant started growling too, it’s a strange noise, not one I expected, more like a Lion’s roar. And our driver started hitting him with a stick because he tried to run off. It was horrible, I hated it and later I went back to the riverside to kick back and watch some more Elephant bathing with the German guys, but this time I really watched. I watched the handlers and how they treated the Elephants and it was appalling, I nearly got up and left, it was horrible. I was disgusted with myself for being a part of it the day before. But what’s done is done I guess.

So now I’m in Pokhara…5 hours on a bus here. Or 5 hours on the roof of a bus should I say! It was good fun, great views, but boy my butt at the end! Over the past 3 days my choice of transport has really taken it’s toll! Elephant back, jeep, bike-riding and bus roof-top riding!

So another long entry, I keep thinking of more from the trek too, but I’ll save that for another time! Dave keep up the star-spotting!

Love Katie xx

P.S. I think i broke a bone in my foot! We'll see how that goes!

Ok so the photos are as follows -
Number 1: Can you guess? Yes, the mighty Everest herself!
Number 2: Me, sitting in a lodge absolutely exhausted! I could hardly keep my eyes open!
Number 3: View from Kala Patthar (5545m). The Khumbu Glacier below and the Himalaya beyond.
Number 4: Basecamp! Myself, Suzanne and our guide Subal.

That's the Ziggy Stardust himself in the white suit at the top of the stairs. Yep, David Bowie! More better celebrity spotting photos soon...

An amazing Jewish wedding in the Central Park fountain and me eating fruit! (Yes mum, volunterily!)

I saw these two today:





















Oh, and this small piece of history:

Photos, Photos, Photos.

Back again. I just went and got some food and went to the famous Strand bookstore (18 miles of books) and Other Music. New York i can see is going to be difficult to blog about purely because of the amount of things to say; for example on the way to the internet cafe i saw a 1920s-style marching band playing 'when the saints go marching in' walking down the street, seemingly for fun. So as a way to catch up here are some photos of the things i have seen over the past few weeks.

Awful day, unique photo though

Yosemite Valley, Giant Sequias

Yosemite Valley, Half Dome

Sea World, San Diego - this and the San Diego Zoo confirmed my disdain for animals in cages but jumping whales are always fun!

A typical dinner on a budget (just joking mum)

The Grand Canyon, Arizona

My good friend Nofr Iends from the Netherlands took this one.

So there are many, many, many more photos but they are taking ages to load so here this is a little taster and hopefully one day i can upload a lot more.

Hope everyone is well and healthy and happy. Tomorrow i will have been away for a month but it seems like a short amount of travelling and yet a long time until France...

Lots of Love

Dave xoxoxo

Boo! From the East Village!
Ok, Ok so i made it to New York City and all stories, fables, poems and myths are true; it is the greatest place on Earth.

I have seen many, many things already in the short one day i have been here (even a famous blog celebrity i knew of in the first 20 minutes of being in the city) and i will come back to this internet cafe in a few hours as it is pretty cheap and i can upload some photos.

Just checking in for now.

I have to say this blog is a great way to keep in touch with everyone, i'm loving the comments. I'll keep my eyes out for the Snow Peacock while i'm here in New York as well. I think i may have seen it in Central Park reading the Times....

Talk soon.

Love Dave.

p.s. Awesome posts Katie, really awesome to hear about it in that detail. I agree with Ceri, little details that you give make it that much better.