It is stressing being here, because we realized that we have a lottt of things to do, but there is not enough time for anything. Tomorrow we are leaving at 7am and taking the bus to Varanasi, India. We had a whole huge route planned for India, but it looks like we're going to have to leave a bunch of stuff out. Zach wants to do a 3 day camel tour through the desert there...we'll see about that haha

Nepal was originally ruled by three kingdoms and there was a lot of political problems for many many years. It used to not be a safe place to travel, and the US Dept of Safety still has out a travel warning against it. However, about 3 years ago, the kindgoms dissovled and Nepal became democratic.
Now it's very safe to be here, but tourism is still suffering. It is quite different from Europe, where I would hear English everywhere I went, compared to here where I can count the number of tourists I've seen on one hand. We can also talk about anyone we want and no one can understand us! haha!
The poverty here is incredible. Yesterday we took a long motorbike tour around Kathmandu and ended up in some slummy areas where we saw small children washing their clothes in the river, men doing back breaking work making bricks, and stray dogs everywhere. The trashmen here recently went on a strike, so there is trash all over the street. Cows are holy and wander the streets. Children run up to you begging for money and doing anything to get your spare change. Everyone we meet says, "You from America, you rich!" and even though that isn't the case, it is really humbling to think of everything that I have and see these small children in ripped clothes playing in the mud.

Today we are getting out of the city and going to try and see the Himalyas. It kind of stinks that we are here during monsoon season because you can't see any mountains at all, hopefully we'll be lucky in the spot that our hotel suggested to us.