Safe in Kathmandu

I'm sure many of you have been monitoring the political situation here in Nepal as we have been trekking, and here's our latest report.

So we were all set to spend the day at the Kathmandu airport (after flying in from the mountain town Lukla - where we started our trek) - as the city was supposed to be under an 8am to 8pm curfew and there would be no way for us to get to our hotel - when the king finally caved in to the protesters main demands (crazy things like a constitutional government elected by the people).

The strike was lifted and everything is almost completely back to normal here, just like somebody flipped a switch. I guess we missed 19 days of chaos, strike and deprivation while we were treking (we experienced absolutely no hint of any of this while we were in the mountains - only heard the smallest hints of the news from other trekkers or from the radio (translated to us of course) as we huddled around the yak dung burning stoves staying warm) Now we are back to a city full of very happy people out shopping and enjoying the late spring sunshine. Everyone has big smiles on their faces.

The only indication that anything happened at all is that the air is amazingly clear here as there has been basically no car traffic the entire time we were gone (the fact that it rained significantly for the first time since October probably helped too). That and there is still a big police presence, but things are definitely looking more hopeful for this wonderful country.

We're spending one more day here sightseeing and shopping before heading back to Bangkok on the 27th. We hope to get a few days at a beach there before we fly to Japan on April 3.

We'll try to get a full rundown of everything that transpired on the trek up in the next few days - including the vast reams of datum we recorded.

Keep the comments coming!!!