Nepal

Yesterday Jochem and I had a free Saturday. I'm not sure if you guys truly understand what this means. It meant that I had no yoga class and that I was not running laps in the park. It meant that Jochem didn't have to work. It meant that neither of us had homework (at least not for that particular day). It meant that we didn't have to clean our house, or water the plants, or clean the fish tank. We were free in the truest sense of the word, in that we slept in till 11 AM, got up, got ready, had a cup of coffee (because now that we have our very own espresso machine we have become those annoying, arrogant, coffee connoisseur, "only our own coffee is good enough" kind of folks), and went to Bagels & Beans around the corner (our neighborhood, Wittevrouwen, recently opened a Bagels & Beans store after months of renovation and Jochem and I think that this shows that the Netherlands is indeed capable of giving room to all that is good about American food. We think it's a great addition to the neighborhood!). We then proceeded to spend the entire day downtown: buying Sinterklaas presents at Nisha for our Sinterklaas party next week; checking out some clothing stores like WE, Steps and H&M; checking out the goodies at the Body Shop (they have this new rasberry body butter that I MUST purchase! It totally fits the describtion of a perfect, chemically-enhanced (although not really, since it's the Body Shop) fruity smell); buying parmezan and buffalo mozzarella cheese at the market and Italian espresso beans (more snobbery) at Bigoli, this great little Italian food store. But the best part was checking out the travel stores and the book stores. We spent some time at the Perry Sport to look at all the backpacks and rucksacks and sleeping bags (I've found really cute girly ones with flowers!) and at Selexyz Broese we looked through all the Loney Planets of all the countries we want to visit on our world trip (it will be interesting to see how we are going to bring all of them with us). We did this to see whether the climate will be right for when we want to visit each country (so as not end up in India during monsoon season or to die in Tibet of frost bite). Besides some rain that we can expect in Indonesia, all should be fine. We also checked out the section on dangers, what with those protests in Thailand and the terrorist attacks in India. According to Lonely Planet, all should be fine. Just be aware of the usual dangers, such as walking around with a lot of money and valuables. And did you know that it is not a good idea to camp out in the wilderness all by yourself as a woman? A real eye opener for me, this one. But it turns out that Nepal is CRAZY! We want to travel from Tibet to Nepal to India, but apparently, this is very dangerous. First of all, Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, is supposedly a very dangerous place to be, and travel agents discourage you from going there. Second of all, to get from Tibet to Nepal is very dangerous. There is a train, but this train is absolutely packed, in the sense that people actually sit on the roof of the train and hang on to the sides and the back of it (I mean, where would you leave your backpack?!). Also, as foreigners you are not allowed to take this train across the border. Then there are busses, but according to Lonely Planet, in a ten-day period, there have been ten fatal bus accidents on the Tibet-Nepal track, killing over 200 people. So I'm thinking of just skipping Nepal altogether.