- People told me the western border town was boring so I decided to just go as far as Chisopani where the big Karneti river comes down from the mountains and there is a bridge built by the Japanese.

- Yes it's weird after becoming accustomed to all the 2nd class roads and buildings in Nepal to see a proper Japanese quality bridge. On the other side it's back to normal dusty untidy Nepal with a 800m row of rundown rustic adobe bazaar booths running above the river bank catching the business of the 1000s of people who live in the hills.

- immigrant workers- Apparently thousands of people who live way up in te hills come down and cross the border to look for low paid work across the border in India.

- Starvation - Someome told me way up further north of Acham there has beena natural disaster largely ignored by the Kathmandu-centric central government and press - the harvests have failed and many people face starvation.

- I dumped my stuff at a rough hotel and set off to explore. In a tea shop I met David a 18 year old who speaks very good English, his brother is a Bardia Park Guide at Racy's.

- I followed the path which leads up the river. First to Varja village, then passed some Japanese/Nepali geophysists studying past climate, canyon views, I stopped at a tea shop,

- A friendly porter seemed enthusiastic that I should visit his village, he kept saying his village was only 1Km more, but I need ed to get back to my hotel. So I ended up running as far as Kuine bridge.


- Cos of the time I had to run the 6Km back .. and I did get back at 5pm.

- My hotel had told me they had fried rice so I negotiated the room price to include this ...but what I got was plain white fried rice with dahl, this is not fried frice, but this is the 3rd time someone had given this to me. The problem is Dahl Bhat is too spicy for me to eat .. so I had to go out and buy bananas.

- I met David again and as ever was followed by huge gang of young kids.

- I think the hotel workers were some kind of gay perverts as they gave me a crap hotel room with holes in the door and windows I could see them peeping through when I had a shower. Earlier one of the guests had also seemed to be propositioning me. If people are gay that is fine it's their business not mine ., but I don't like this kind of sleaziness that occurs in cultures where homosexuality is oppressed

- If the atmosphere had been interesting I might have hung around for a day, but I decided to start travelling east to get to Hetauda.