Day 40, February 17

There are no photos again. The day passed unnoticed. The journey is slowly turning into ordinary life. This is probably neither good nor bad; we’ve just “gone to ground” for a while. I hope this will help us gather strength before the mountains.

In the morning we got up unhurriedly and waited until the electricity came on at 12. We had tea and went about our business.
We went out for lunch again to the momos place we’ve already become familiar with.

We decided to go to the supermarket. It was a bit far to walk, so we took a minibus. Even in terms of minibuses, Nepal is about 10 years behind Ukraine. They’re just as awful as they used to be back home — small, low.. It’s impossible to stand in them at all. Besides the driver, each minibus has a “conductor”; every 100 meters he opens the minibus doors and shouts some incomprehensible words — apparently the route direction. For some reason, the minibuses don’t have numbers.

We didn’t like the supermarket. There wasn’t much food there. The prices weren’t much different from the prices in Thamel. A small supermarket by our standards, “Velyka Kysenya” on Heroiv Dnipra, would seem like a hypermarket here, with its own range of goods. We bought batteries and coffee.

The way back was full of adventures. Standing by the roadside near the store, we asked the conductor of a slowing minibus whether he was going to Thamel. Either the conductor didn’t understand, or they simply don’t listen to where people need to go — as a result, they took us somewhere out of town. We jumped out who knows where. The cheating conductor waved vaguely in some direction, as if to say: Thamel is over there, go look for another minibus.

We crossed the road and saw a familiar minibus number, No. 5 — we had seen these passing not far from Thamel.
Minibuses are little three-wheeled creatures. In the small cab at the front sits the driver, and in the back, in the cargo area, passengers sit on benches. The vehicle is tiny; Volchyi, sitting down, seemed to be touching the ceiling with his head. We jumped into the back of this three-wheeled wonder and sped toward Thamel. It’s funny that the driver constantly adjusts the number of people sitting on both sides of the cargo area — the vehicle starts to lean to one side if there are more people sitting somewhere.
Soon we finally made it back to our hotel.

After catching our breath a little at the hotel, we went wandering through the shops in Thamel again.
They say it’s easy to buy anything in Thamel. That seems to be true at first glance — there are plenty of things here. But when you’re looking for something specific, nothing fits: the color, size, length, quality, etc…

By evening we had acquired some of the things we needed: pants, socks, and other items.