Sunday 17 Feb 2013 Kathmandu

Up early again to try for the Everest flight. Cancelled again as the mountain was not visible. We have one last chance tomorrow before we fly on to Pokhara.

After breakfast Mike's Sherpa friend Dilli and tour guide Sherpa Binod came to take us on a tour of Kathmandu. We visited:

The Great Stupa of Boudhanath. A stupa is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, typically the ashes of deceased, used by Buddhists as a place of meditation and covered in prayer flags. There are hundreds of prayer wheels and it is said that each spin of a prayer wheel is the equivalent of reciting the mantra embossed on it eleven thousand times. It appeared to be an obsession with some people to spin every wheel.

Pashupatinath is Nepal's holiest Hindu pilgrimage site with riverbank cremation places. The deceased are first cleansed by dipping their feet in the holy river. The male family then carry the body to the funeral pyre, cover it with straw then the fire is lit beginning in the mouth of the deceased. The eldest son's head is then shaved. In addition to the temples there are many sadhus or dreadlocked half naked holy men.

Lastly we headed for Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square which is a World Heritage site containing a number of temples and shrines, both Hindu and Buddhist including:

• Hippie temple
• Kumari Ghar is the home of the 'Kumari' or living goddess, a young girl chosen to be the Kumari until she reaches puberty.
• Kal-Bhairav which is a huge stone and a place for people to swear the truth.

To our surprise we saw a number of eagles at low level in Kathmandu city, but it turned out later that they were scavenging the piles of rubbish along the banks of and in the rivers.

Our tour finished at 16:30 and we met up with Dilli again at 18:00 to go to Rum Doodles restaurant. This is used by Trekkers and Everest summiteers and they leave messages of who they are on "feet" i.e. large blank outlines of feet for them to write their details on which then adorn the walls. We wrote on one with each of us trying to trump the other. After an excellent night it is back to bed for an early morning start back to the airport in the hope of the Everest flight taking off. We spun sufficient prayer wheels at the stupa that we should have good luck.

Tomorrow noon we fly to Pokhara to meet up with Major Lil.