Merry Christmas (from wherever I am at the moment)

Just a quickie to wish a belated Merry Christmas to all. I am now sitting in a hotel room in Kathmandu after a bus trip that I will draw a discreet cover over and let you imagine on your own.

I’ll go into more detail of my last days in Sauraha a bit later because at the moment my overriding memory is one of having to say good bye to a bunch of kids that I have gotten to know really well and of having a number of them clinging to me and telling me not to go and even having a couple of them in tears.

I have all the photos I’ve taken and a couple of souvenirs I’ve bought but the things I’m going to hold dearest will be the Christmas cards they hand drew for me (bless their little Hindu hearts) and the farewell cards where they all insisted that I not forget them because they would never forget me.

The major problem with these projects may simply be finishing them.

Tomorrow I have an extremely long day as I make my way to Tokyo and what is sure to be a major culture shock. It’s a part of the world I’ve always wanted to see although I may have to face up to the fact that I will be lucky to get a ticket to Tokyo Disneyland at this time of the year and just content myself with a greater variety of food than I’ve seen for the last 10 weeks.

So, that’s me for the moment. I’ll probably try and kill time in a couple of airports tomorrow by writing a longer version of this and sending it from Tokyo, depending on how much the hotel charges me for access.