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It is our last night in Nepal. While we’ll be sad to leave the country, neither Scott nor I will miss the Thamel District of Kathmandu. Anyone who’s been here in the past few years will understand I think – it’s just an overcrowded tourist enclave where every other person is trying to sell you a trek, hash, a rafting trip, or tiger balm, and the cover bands play the same songs over and over (right now, Sweet Child of Mine is pouring through the opened doorway of this internet café). Due to the fact that Kathmandu is the jumping off point for most trips, we’ve spent a collective week’s worth of nights here.

But, of course, with the bad comes to the good – the cheap Thamel bakeries that we visit on average twice a day, the Mustang Guesthouse that always has a clean room for us and has become a home away from home, the reliably delicious food at OR2K (thanks for the recommendation, Jen), and… hmmm… I’m hard-pressed to think of another good. I guess all the tourist trappings that I find irritable would be missed if they weren’t here.

Apart from Kathmandu, Scott and I have had an interesting time in our 30 days in Nepal. From the warm forests and grasslands of Chitwan National Park to the cold temperatures and astounding Himalayan views of the Khumbu Valley, from the haze of Pokhara and Phewa Lake to the clarity and crispness of the air in the Langtang Valley, Scott and I have tried our hardest to take in every moment. But we’ve barely skimmed the surface of what this country has to offer. I’d like to say we’ll both be back some day, and we might, but Scott will, for sure, return.

Sometime in the future I’ll get around to transcribing the journal entries I wrote while trekking in the Khumbu and Langtang and I’ll post them along with some photos.

In the meantime, I’ll continue, when I can, to post entries on our travels. Tomorrow morning we fly to Bangkok via Delhi. From there, our plan is to head north for a bit, take a boat down the Mekong into Laos, then Cambodia, and, if there’s time, into Vietnam. We’ll see what we can squeeze into five weeks. I’m thrilled to be returning to Southeast Asia, the locale of my first backpacking trip over ten years ago and several return trips between 2003 and 2005 (and home of some of the most delicious food in the world).

But I’m also nervous to see how it’s changed. Really nervous.