Consistently Inconsistent

I met up with Brian on Friday and we've spent the last few days trying to get permits for the peaks arranged and flights booked to Lukla and tying up whatever other loose ends we've got. Brian met a shopkeeper, named Sanjew, of a jewelry shop on one of the main streets here in Thamel (the tourist area in Kathmandu) amazingly he didn't try to sell Brian anything but rather invited us to a party. Neither of us really had any idea what to expect so we met him at his shop and just went with it. His brother picked us up and drove us up to a nice house in a different part of the city. We sat in the garden and talked politics (not surprisingly they hate Bush), religion (arranged marriages are still the norm in many places here), and a lot about American culture (they are surprisingly convinced that Hollywood is the real America). We also met another brother and a cousin, Sidarth. Sidarth is in charge of the business and even though he is younger than the brothers they treat him with immense respect. It was strange because we never sat down and talked to all of them at once, but instead they each cycled through to talk to us and then disappeared to a different part of the house. Strange party. For dinner they served mutton in curry with rice and a kind of bread. It was really good although the meat was still on the bone. We found out later that the bone the meat was attached to was the skull. Delicious sheep head with brain and all, probably better I didn't know that until after the meal. We had lunch with Sanjew the next day and went back to their house on Saturday for dinner. Its been an interesting cultural experience.

So in addition to eating bizarre meals with strangers we've been trying to get our permits arranged for the peaks we want to climb. The only thing that I'm certain of is that if you ask 10 different people the same question you are guranteed to get 10 different answers. Progress has been slow, we have to go through a trekking agency to get the permits. We probably went into 8 or 10 different places trying to get straight answers on our plans. It was incredible how wide the range of answers to our questions were. Finally we settled on an agency today and paid our fees, arranged porters, and arranged our flights to Lukla. Hopefully we will fly the day after tomorrow, but we are not sure yet. I'll try to post once or twice more before we head into the hills. We are having a great time and really looking forward to getting into the mountains.