All Hail King Gyanendra.

Al had been in the country all of 2 hours before I broke the news to him "dude, I need to get out of this city. Get some rest and we are leaving for the mountains in 2 days. Deal with it." We went to see Nibban, my Nepali teacher, who was going to help us get the best prices for permits and travel arrangements into the Himalayas. Nibban introduced us to his good friend who runs a trekking company next door. We were then informed about a new government law that goes into effect starting tomorrow. "tomorrow?" As of the 27th, you can no longer trek solo in the country, you must have a guide, you must plan it through a government approved trekking company, and you must purchase the new government permits. It seems the king wants to squeeze every last rupee out of the tourists as he possibly can. After an agonizing 5 hours of haggling over costs and fees related to this new law, we folded and hired a guide, despite our resistance. I crossed the street to the ATM and took out a cool fifty thousand rupees. It was quite a feeling to be walking around with $50,000.00 in my pocket. Too bad it only amounted to about $600US. We paid up and got the plans together. The good news was we were able to plan not only the Annapurna trek, he also got us a good deal on both our Everest trek and jungle safari for later this winter. More than anything I am just happy to get out into the mountains. The king can have my money.