Less than 200km separate Pokhara from Kathmandu but the buses need more than 7hours! The bus started at 7:30, made a 20min breakfast break at 9am and a 30min lunch break by noon and reached KTM by 3pm.
Kathmandu is an impressive city. The touristic area Thamel is full of shop selling souvenir or trekking equipment, similar to the lake shore in Pokhara. Then you reach the Durbar square and its magnificent temples. Actually, on or a little behind each street, you can find a temple or something religious. The main streets are overcrowded, many are used as a market and a lot of Nepalis go around to sell and buy their vegetables. Very often, you cross a narrow path to discover behind the street a quite big and quiet square hosting a stupa!
The few days I spent in KTM (13th to 16th of November) matched their Deepavali festival (festival of lights). The Nepali made lovely decorations on the streets and enjoyed loud dancing in the streets! In the KTM Valley and Nuwar culture, the Deepavali is also the New Year eve. Walking on the 15th had indeed something from the 1st of January: streets emptier but dirty and all shops closed!
These festive days were however not so easy to organize my way back to India, where I have a flight from Kolkata to Bangkok on the 20th. Hopefully, the office delivering the India visa was still open: I got a transit visa within 24h. I convinced the only official travel agency selling train ticket for India to get me one to Kolkata although it was closed. The next step was to get a bus ticket from KTM to Birganj, the Nepali town close to the border. All buses starting from Sundhara terminal were overbooked already, I finally was lucky to find one seat from Kalanki on the Friday evening.
The last day was a lazy day, relaxing in the Garden of Dreams with Thibault, Claire and Arnaud, 3 French I met before who are also starting a world trip.