Namaste!

Which means Hello and to my Australian ears sounds like "Nah-ma-stay". Actually/ I think it means something like "the spirit/god/Divine in me greets the spirit/god/Divine in you". It's used for both hello and goodbye.
I sit now, at about 4pm, in the hotel's "Cyber Room". There are six PCs here, no charge for use, and most of the keyboards have the letter characters stuck on with sticky tape, in a jumble of printed capital letters, and hand written ones - depending on when the original key letters rubbed off. We arrived in Nepal at around 5 past 12.
The flight over was ok. The actual flight - not too bad. A bit of turbulence, but not enough to cause any real concern. We didn't have any TV screens like on the flight from Australia, which I was (foolishly) expecting. The airline, SilkAir, do do that sort of thing, but not on the flight we took. The service was nice, and the meal ok - I saw a weird looking black bean and decided to bite into it... it was a chili pepper. Doh. Vince had been told to try and get a window seat on the right side to see the mountains as we flew in. They were incredible. It started off with little brown mountains poking through the bottom layer of clouds, and then, about an hour out of Nepal, these massive white peaks emerging from the clouds. It was unbelievable. We took photos, but of course they did it no justice. Without my glasses on they just looked like clouds, and I was a bit skeptical when Vince started pointing them out, but with them on I could see the sharp shadows caused by the rocks and the whiter than white of the snow.
The airport was an interesting experience, but not a bad one. I was expecting the place to smell bad - going on what I'd read. It did smell earthy and stale and a bit wet-dog, but nothing horrible, and after a few minutes I didn't notice it. The weather, 17c is very nice, doesn't feel cold and is not humid. The airport reminds me of school - small rooms with windowed corridors, except this was made out of red brick. All the houses we saw as we were landing looked half finished, I am still not sure if they are finished or not. The airport was tiny. It didn't take long to get through though. We changed some money, collected our bags, and went outside. There were hardly any people coming out of the airport but there were loads of people out the front asking tourist if they need a taxi, or a hotel, or a guide, or a tour, etc etc. We had our taxi pre-arranged by the hotel and there was a guy with Vince's name on a sign so we were ok. An old man in a funny hat took our bags to a little van with broken door locks. We sat in and Vince was going through the newly changed money looking to give the guy a tip. It was all a bit rushed and Vince ended up giving him a $10 tip! He probably made the guys day! Our driver took us to the hotel - it was very cool. I couldn't help but smile at almost everything. The drive was fun, not really scary. Road rules certainly don't apply though. At one stage we were driving on the right hand side of the road with cars driving past us on both sides, before we got back to the left (the correct side). We saw one mangy looking cow roaming the street, a bunch of skinny, small dogs, and I saw two cats when I was sitting on the balcony before. I saw a pigeon that was so big I thought it was a statue until it flew away.
Vince isn't feeling very well - flying doesn't agree with him and he ended up with a huge headache. I left him upstairs to sleep it off and had a look around the hotel. I figured out the exchange rate - about $1 = 50r. I ordered some food (Mongolian Chicken and Sausages on Horseback). I grabbed some drinks and went to the room to wait for the food.

I wrote this post yesterday, but when I tried to post it there was a power out, so I can't remember what else I meant to say!