Bali to Kathmandu

Fabulous soup and porridge my last breakfast at Hilton Bali

Today I flew from Bali to Kathmandu through Singapore. Luckily, the flight wasn’t until early afternoon so I was able to sleep in and enjoy one last Hilton breakfast buffet. Now that I have tried the congee in Bali, I made a bigger effort to locate the congee station. The soup station was also the congee station and I tried both, which were delicious!

Soup and porridge station

My driver Jake who is also a chef

Super nifty heat sensor in airport

Toilet advice in Bali Airport

Arrival in Kathmandu meeting my guide Ram

My flight out of Bali went smoothly as did my layover in Singapore. I arrived in Nepal late at night and began the series of lines to check paperwork, use their computers to apply for an on-arrival visa, pay for the visa, and finally go through immigration control about an hour after landing. My bags are waiting for me when I arrive and with a little help I find the exit where I find Ram, my Nepal Trekking guide waiting for me. We catch a taxi to the Hyatt Regency and I settle in for the night.

Hyatt Regency Kathmandu

Hyatt Regency entrance area

The next day my sister Natalie and my friend Dawne arrived. We slipped out the back side of the massive Hyatt property to get to the city streets and exchange some USD to Nepal rupees. Their bills have animals on one side with the rhinos on the smaller 100 rupee bills, tigers on the 500 rupee bills and the elephants taking the revered position on the 1000 rupee bills.

Nepal money has rhinos in 100s tigers in 500s and elephants in 1000s

Woman making our meal with fresh grated veggies

Later we popped out to find some food and buy toilet paper for our trek. The place we wanted to go to was closed, but we found a nice little restaurant that we nearly missed as it looks like a house with curtain across the doorway hiding the kitchen. Luckily Dawne spotted the sign, which can only be seen from one direction. They gestured us inside to the kitchen area which had two small tables and we sat at one. They only had a handful of items available so Dawne ordered veggie soup and I went with these fried round items. She hand grated some veggies and put the soup on while getting out dough and kneading it to roll out for my round items. I thought they would be donut sized but they turned out to be more like 7 inch pie-like pastries. They were really good, and even better when we cut them into sections and dipped them into Dawne’s soup.

Dawne eating veggie soup

frying the pastry in oil

My delicious veggie pie which is great dipped in Dawnes soup

Early the next morning we stored some of our luggage at the hotel and packed the rest of our belongings into duffel bags. One of our porters strapped them onto the jeep and we headed off on a 10 hour jeep ride to Phaplu where we would begin our trek to Everest Base Camp.

Heading off on our trekking adventure with 10 hour jeep ride