The first photo is the view from the balcony in front of my bedroom window:
I'm living in the inner suburbs, so I'm quite close to the centre but not on a main road or anything, which is probably a good thing, since otherwise I would probably die of the fumes. The family I'm living with are very friendly, and have a dog, which is below (with my shoes)
It's called Bahadur, by the way. I've been mostly spending my time exploring Kathmandu. First I went to Swayambhunath, which is a Buddhist stupa - basically the Buddhist equivalent of a reliquary - it's supposed to have the remains of some famous teacher in it or something. It looks like this:
To get to it you have to climb a bunch of (very steep) steps. Apparently Nepali people go there just to get their exercise in the morning:
It's worth it though, because you get an awesome view of the city from the top:
Today I went to an area of Kathmandu called Balaju - it's a park with various water features dotted around it. The most impressive is called Baisdhara, which literally means '22-fountains', which does what it says on the tin. There are 22 decorated fountains, a hundred years old, which still work (they charged 5 rupees - about 4p - to be allowed to take pictures, by the way, so I hope you're appreciative.):
There is a house nearby which basically shows what traditional local architecture looks like - the distinguishing feature is the windows, though, which are unfortunately slightly obscured here.
On the way I saw a poster advertising the Young Communist League (the youth front of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) ) , which I thought was interesting, so I took a picture of it. The man is Prachanda, the chairman of the Maoists, and next to it there's a red flag with a hammer and sickle on it, which you can't see, but I assure you is there:
And now...monkeys!
I hope you understand the sheer amount of torture which went into making a blog-post this picture heavy on a Nepali internet connection. It was worth it though, I think.
