Sundance Music Festival Last Resort

So I traveled back from Pokhara at the end of last week. The coach was only an hour late! This was due the road being closed due to an accident (Nepalese people are very nosy whislt driving past wreckage - people were literally hanging out of the windows to get a better view). Got dropped of at a random bus stop in Kathmandu, was told it wasn't that far to walk and pointed in the right direction, so ignored taxi drivers insistence it was too far to walk (they always say that). About half an hour later got back to central Thamel, I was to discover that apparently people give you directions to be helpful even if they don't actually know. I went to the same bus stop to go to The Last Resort and it took five minutes.

Spent a day in Thamel ambling about, rented a sleeping bag, swapped books e.t.c. Then set of for The Last Resort and the Sundance Music festival. Got on the bus in Thamel even though some woman was moaning that she wouldn't get on because the bus was dangerous! My and Antoinette both decided that we'd rather be on a dangerous bus than listening to her moan for 3 hours. Found myself an Aussie on the bus that had no one else to share a tent with and established that he wasn't scared of spiders and doesn't snore (this was a lie) and agreed to share a tent with him, got to festival site and awaited a tent allocation (thankfully all the tents were numbered as they were all exactly the same and added bonus, they wrote your tent number on the back of you hand. Its like they knew I was going to get drunk or something).

Had lunch, started drinking and awaited with anticipation the music to start. It has to be said it didn't get of to the best starts, we couldn't work out whether people were soundchecking (no one - two - one - two here) or playing their actual set. All we knew was that they'd played the same song twice and it was getting quite irritating. It turned out that this was just the sound check and the music started proper. Low and behold we got to here the same song again. The groups were all alright, would have prefered it if there wasn't as much hanging about as they swapped over or adding yet more drums to the stage as it seemed to be. DJ came on (I was drunk by this point) seemed to play all of ABBA Gold and then some stuff I can remember dancing to but not what it was. A very mean Nepalese man for some reason I can't remember insisted he had a fitter arse than me and I spent a while asking all the men in the crowd if my arse was better than his!!! I went to bed soon after, I say I went to bed, I went to the toilet and never got past my tent on the way back. Got woken up in the early hours of the morning to listen to the funniest arguement / fight I have ever heard.

Next day whilst I was at a music festival, guess what it rained. It absolutely chucked it down. Some mean person told me that there were bacon sandwiches available (this would be unparralleled luxury), so out came the cagoule, I had a mission. The bacon sandwiches were a myth so I had to make do with a hard boiled egg and a cup of tea, whilst listening to a bloke do Johnny Cash covers.

Went back to bed till they kicked us out of the tent to put it down, so moved to a comfy seat in the bar where I could see and hear the music and waited for the bus back. Apparently whilst I was happily enjoying the music festival The Moaist part of the government had sacked the armed forces chief of staff, their opposition had quit the coalition government and people were protesting / rioting in Kathmandu. Yay for crazy parts of the world. After much discussions with people who live in Kathmandu, I discovered I was better of heading back to Kathmandu sooner rather than later, if I stayed at the last resort, there would be a good chance that in a few days the roads to Kathmandu will be closed by the police / army.

So I'm now back in Kathmandu. Thamel(area where I'm staying) seems to be largely unaffected at the moment, business as usual. There have been differences, my hotel has had both lots of huge security gates closed (first time I've seen any closed since I've been here) and there appears to be more UN vehicles in the car park. There are riots going on (the BBC tells me) so I'm avoiding going round the Durber square area.

I was going to make a descision today about when to travel back to India, but its finally happened I'm poorly, I have spent alot of the morning on the toilet and have decided to leave decision making until tomorrow.