That morning I finally got sure that we had been swindled by the taxi tout. We hadn't seen him since we had checked him the guesthouse, and I discovered the real name of the place where we were: Karki Guesthouse. We had breakfast of the "German Bakery" that stood in front of our hotel. It was a nice cozy place with good sandwiches of fresh bread and equally fresh cakes, namely those cinamon rolls that turned out a must on Maria Jose's breakfasts in Kathmandu. This would be the place for almost every breakfast we took in Kathmandu. There was a little splanade with cloth covered tables and they kept passing nepali or indian music on a little hifi. The music gave an exotic touch to those mornings and it was great to start our days there.

After breakfast we took the direction of Durbar Square. The streets were full of people, not only locals, but also some tourists, although these weren't so many. It was amazing how people and things were so colourfull, plenty of life. Air smelled different of anything I knew also - spices, burnt wood and other less good, like strange gasolines and dirt. We have to notice also how streets were generally not very clean, in some places there were piles of trash. For what we understood, there aren't trash bins, people dump their wastes on piles on the streets that are then clean by every 2 or 3 days. As I stated before, it was holiday. Besides, there was an election campaingn going on, so the decoration of the streets were at a maximum, with election posters and banners along with wishes of happy Diwali (the name of the hindu festival) and happy new year. There were also lots of houses with strings made of orange flowers hanged on the walls. Holiday seems to mean day of shopping and walking in the town in Nepal, nothing like our holidays, where that means day for running away from the big towns.

As we left the Thamel area, shops began to be not only tourist oriented and started to appear lots of street vendors of every kind of food. The Assam Square was specially crowded, like subway in rush hour. It wasn't easy to get out of there... On the way we met a french young woman who was visiting Kathmandu before her organised trek began. She was doing the contrary of me in terms of guidebooks: she was following her Guide Routard or Guide Michelin to the milimeter and the second. We separated because of that, she wasn't feeling very well being with this couple that didn't pay any attention to any guidebook and prefered to folow their own instincts... Maybe she was right and we were wrong. I still don't know the name of the square where we meet, though I've liked it very much. After all, it was there that I saw the first big stupa of my life (and several smaller ones, as it's quite usual).

We were approached by some minor hasslers trying to sell flutes, small statues, tankas, knives and possibly other things. Knives of the Gurka Army were among the more frequent things to sell. I found relatively easy to get rid of those street vendors and they weren't many, so they didn't really bother us. At the entrance of of Durbar Square, we met a tankas vendor. He said that he had many spanish friends in Spain, namely in Barcelona, where he had already been for some weeks. He spoke a little bit of spanish too. He splained to us some things about the Diwali and the Newari New Year (he was Newari). In spite of all that talk, again it was easy to go out the shop buying him nothing. Neither of us were particulary fond of tankas.

The vision of Durbar Square was great. It's a really beautiful and magic place, with lots of small and big temples, the palace and, not less important, lots of life, as it was crowded as the other streets and squares were. They even had a small food market in one of the corners. We enjoyed being there relaxedly for some time. Big bells, red walls, funny "chinese" like wooden roofs, colourfull statues of exotic hindu deties, namely lions, equally colourfull hindu saint men, statues of kings on top of columns, gigantic drums, real monkies, a relatively lmodern large police station and a big white classic buiding, completely out of context were some of the amazing things we saw on that square. The place was a little better cared than the rest of the town. We were approached by a hindu holly man, I understood they are called "baba". He was looking for some ruppees in exchange for a tika on our forehands and some pictures of him. I bet he is more experienced in photography than many rookie models. The tika is that spot that hindus sometimes have on the forehead. I don't know if they call tika to every spot. Our were big and red. Everybody was using them because of Diwali. After Diwali it wouldn't be usual to see so much tikas, specially on men.

We were approached also by a street vendor. He wasn't too very persuasive and he didn't worry too much with our lack of interest. He explained us some things about the things on the square and tried to know about our plans for our stay in Nepal. He was trying to get engaged as our treking guide. He convinced us to follow him on a guided tour on the area.

We went to the Kumari Devi palace first. This is one of the more intriguing living legends in Nepal. It's a young girl who is believed to be the incarnation of a hindu godess, so she is know as "the living godess". Nobody is allowed to photograph her and besides appearing several times an hour at a veranda at her palace, her only official task is to bless the king and participate on a procession once a year. Her reign ends when she has her first menstrual period. Another interesting detail is that she's choosen from a buddist ethnic group, although she is adored by hindus. For someone coming from a place with so much religious tensions and crispations, specially in the past, and also not very well informed about religious phenomens in general, it's not easy to understand religion in Nepal. The tensions surely exist, but they assume different forms, maybe more discret. The idea I got is that is some confusion among common people between, the buddist sharing much things with hindus. Maybe it's not much different from the similarities between jewish religion and the various forms of christianism, but to that we are more used. However, the image one gets from outside at first glance is that there is much peace among buddists and hindus in Nepal. Maybe Bosnians could learn something with Nepalis - we have been told that there are 36 different ethnic groups in the country and several languages are spoken too. However, they seem to manage to be in peace for centuries.

After seeing the Kumari Devi, a little girl of no more than 10 years, we insisted on seeing Freak Street, the prefered place of the 60's and 70's hippies. Our "guide" didn't like the idea, he kept saying that it wasn't a good place, there were many bad people there. Maybe he was truly worried about our safety. Anyway, we were very curious about the place, so he took us there. What a desilusion! Freak Street is no more interesting than most streets of Thamel. It didn't seem dangerous, too, people there hadn't uglier look than on other streets. We were a little bit tired of having a guide, not much because of what he was or wasn't doing, but because we prefer to be on our own, so we gave him some douzens ruppees and send him away with a thanks. He didn't seem offended, he seemed to understand our point, and that made our consciences clean, we had no intention of hurting his feelings. We agreed that if we decided to be interested on a trek on the area of Dumre we would meet him the next day at noon, with no compromise.

It was luch time, so we entered a restaurant which had some tables in a small shadowed garden. I decided to try nepali food, the "famous" Dal Baht. Apparently that's the only nepali dish available in restaurants for tourists and one can't find it in all of them. Its flavour and composition can vary alittle, but it has to come allways with lentilles, potatoes and boiled white rice. It's a little spice, although not much if compared to the common indian food. The one they served me there had other varieties of legumes and some chicken meat ( alittle bit like indian chicken curry).

Although the fodd was nothing special, the place was pleasant. The cool of the shadow of the plants tasted good, as the temperature was like high summer in Portugal. They were passing 60's and 70's rock n' roll music, quite common in many places in Kathmandu, specially appropriate here in Freak Street.

After the long lunch, we strolled by Durbar square again and then by Ratna Park. This part of Kathmandu is nice, although the park has that characteristic miscared look. Anyway, it's a large open park with a fantastic view to some snow caped peaks, bordered here and there by some classic and victorian buildings.

There were a lot of people looking like astrologues or other sort of fortune tellers on the side walk. Most of them were old ladies. They had a plate with some flowers, one or more incense burner and some intriguing draws on the soil, made of colourful powders. They looked like those powders that Hindus use to their forehead "tikas". We saw some sellers of those powders, quite tempting for anyone carrying a camera. People in Nepal and Asia in general seem to have a greater pleasure on colours than westerners. Our countries look rather gray after coming back.

On that same park we saw a political demonstration of the comunists. They were concentrating before really starting. Again, a festival of colour, red in this case. They had lots of large flags which made a great contrast with the green of the grass. There were some policemen watching. Although they loooked calm, the environment wasn't very good. I remember noticing that policemen had no sticks or shields, just pistols - ''this means shots if there are troubles between them and the demonstrators" - I thought. I think I wasn't wrong. That evening we heard about a demonstration that ended with some people killed, including one candidate.

At the end of the afternoon we headed for Patan. It's quite a long walk. On the Bagmati River bank we passes by an old temple with nitid classical (european) influences. It was quite run down and it was the domain of a numerous tribe of Rhesus monkeys. These animals seem to live in every Hindu temple in Nepal.

Patan is now a suburb of Kathmandu, although it once was the capital of a rival kingdom. Strange thing how could the capitals of two rival countries be so close to each other. The town has an atmosphere different than Kathmandu, it feels more like a small town. We went to Darbar Square, where we weren't for long as it became dark very quickly. We were a little bit sorry for not having come sooner to apreciate better the square. The numerous temples were a little bit alike those of Kathmandu's Darbar Square, but they weren't copies; in fact each of the Darbar squares of each 3 capitals of the Kathmandu Valley have their own unique style and atmosphere.

We had some difficulty in getting an auto rikshaw. Finally we managed to get one, conducted by a boy. It was quite an experience that rikshaw night ride! I don't remember well if we had lights. If we had, they were very very dim. Nevertheless, we rode at full speed, sometimes passing by trucks ond other vehicles at less than 30 cm (1 feet). On more than a curve I thought that we were going to turn. Who needs high powered motorcycles or cars to have strong sensations? My adrenalin level during that rikshaw ride were well higher than when driving at 180 Km/h (120 m.p.h) on a highway. We arrived on one piece, so we had an excelent excuse for having another well deserved dinner on "our" Tashi Deleg.