By the time we landed in Kathmandu we were wrecked. We had checked into a place recommended by Team Zurich, the Annapurna guest house. It wasn't bad but it was pricey considering we had no shower. We had tried to get a room at the Hotel Lily, recommended by the London Lawyers, but the Lily was hard to bargain down and when we finally did reach a price, they said they couldn't let us move into our room for several hours.

So our first full day in Kathmandu wasn't exactly relaxing. We ended up switching hotels, to a place called Sweet Dreams, which was nice but a bit pricey by local standards at 400 rupees a night.

The ride across Tibet had really beat us up. We were both underweight, after weeks of eating mostly ramen. All we could think about was food and plenty of it. Whenever we saw a restaurant--and our neighborhood, Thamil, was full of them--we'd walk in, eat our fill, and then walk, almost directly, into another one. The first four or five days there, we ate four or five meals a day.

Eric, who was down to about 130 pounds, about 20 pounds below his normal weight. He tried to right the situation by indulging his Snickers bars fantasy. Back in Lhasa, Tibet, we had stocked up on 10 Snickers bars, and then split one bar when the riding got tough, usually on a pas. The whole time Eric had longed to eat a whole bar by himself. So in Kathmandu, he bought lots. For the first week, he walked around with a Snickers in one hand, and another one, unopened, in his shirt pocket. It took a lot of restraint, but I managed not to ask him for any.

The night we arrived we had checked the mailboxes at the Kathmandu View Guest house for a note from Ben, one of the London Lawyers. Along with that note, we saw one from Team Swiss! They had arrived four or five days earlier and were wondering if we were still alive. We spent the next several days partying with them, and with the Zurich Couriers, and Chris, the Philadelphia bike courier.

We also visited Dawn til Dusk, a bike shop run by a Nepali pro mountain biker, Sonam. Sonam was the guy who had ridden across Nepal just a few hundred meters behind us for the last few days; we had missed him because he had to stick close to his clients, and couldn't race ahead to talk to us. The London Lawyers had already told us about him--he had fixed their bikes at the end of their trans-Tibet ride--so we were anxious to stop by his shop.

Sonam's shop is small, but well equipped. He fixed Eric's bike rack by banging out the bolts that were stuck in the bicycle frame (the heads had been shorn off). He also sold us a used bike pump, since ours wasn't working well, and he gave us a bike bottle. We had a great time talking with him about his many rides across Asia, including Tibet, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Bhutan. His stories about Tibet included show-and-tell: a bike helmet and a bike frame, both dented by Tibetan stone throwers.

We signed Sonam's guest book and read a newspaper article about him that was posted on the wall. It says, among other things that Sonam was thrown out of his village when he was a teen-ager, because he chopped off some guy's finger with an axe during a fight. After that, he became a kick-boxer in Thailand and a Buddhist monk in Nepal. It's hard to imagine that Sonam was ever angry enough to use an axe against a human, because he's so friendly now.

If you're ever in Kathmandu, stop by Sonam's shop and say hello. His shop is in the courtyard of the Kathmandu Guest House. If you think of it, bring him spare bike parts or bike magazines. Look for us in his guestbook.

A few days after we arrived we achieved total decompression by having a pizza party with a bunch of trans-Tibetan riders: Team Swiss, Team Zurich, Sonam, and Andy, the guy we had spotted cycling fast away from Everest Base Camp, wearing a polartec body suit. Chris, a bike courier from Philadelphia, was there too, and had his own stories to tell.

Over pizza at Fire and Ice, we all swapped stories about yaks and troublesome tots. Team Swiss had had lots of problems with kids, as we had, but they had also had to break past roadblocks set up by begging adults.

Team Zurich--Duncan, Antonio and Ernesto, all bike couriers from Zurich--told wild stories about a female, Italian pro bicyclist and her mechanic cycling partner. It turns out Team Zurich had met the Italians in Kathmandu, if I remember correctly, just as all five were about to fly to Lhasa to start the trans-Tibet ride back to Kathmandu.

The Chinese technically require all tourists in Tibet to travel on group permits. It's relatively easy to break away from a group if you fly in from from Chengdu, China. But if you come in from Lhasa, you really can't break away from your group. As Team Zurich and Team Italy pondered this, they decided to sign up as a 'group' that would cross Tibet together.

It's a long and sordid story, but here are the highlights. Team Zurich says the Italian pro cyclist could ride well, but couldn't do anything else. Her mechanic, whom she had met fairly recently, soon abandoned her. A day or two into the ride, he simply rode on ahead, taking all her spare gear with him. Team Zurich said after that, they had to babysit Ms. Pro biker, who drove them insane with her helplessness. Among other things, they say, she couldn't read a map. Instead, she relied solely on some friends' written road notes, which were vague. At times of crisis, they heard her muttering things like "dua picolatta villagio."

Team Zurich and the pro biker ended up summiting Gyantsola in a storm. The pro-biker got cold (she didn't have good clothing, even though she was sponsored by a bike company, Team Zurich said) and then got altitude sickness. (Nearly every cyclist we talked to got altitude sickness on Gyantsola; we highly recommend taking the summit in two days instead of one, as Ben recommended in his notes).

Team Zurich flagged down a truck and paid the driver US$20 to get the pro-biker (accompanied by one of Team Zurich) down to a safe altitude. Duncan and the remaining Zurich courier ended up huddling in a hut with a family of yak herders.

Then, at the border on the way into Nepal, the Missing Mechanic showed up. Since he was on Team Zurich's visa, he couldn't leave the country without them. Team Zurich's Ernesto, a tall, broad-shouldered guy, said he was trying to talk to Chinese border guards when the Mechanic butt in. Ernesto says he asked the Mechanic to shut up several times, and finally offered to put his fist in the Mechanic's face, which he did. The Chinese border guards urged peace. Team Zurich and the Mechanic managed to cross the border.

But later, on the other side, Team Zurich's Italian-blooded Antonio and the Mechanic got in a full-fledged head banging contest. Several appalled tourists looked on, while Duncan and Ernesto laughed about 'the Italian' tempers. Duncan told the gawkers about how the Mechanic had abandoned Ms. Pro Biker, so in the end, the tourists were on his side.

A few days after our pizza party, Team Zurich drifted out of town. Team Swiss started holing up in their room, as Yvonne had developed some kind of gastro-intestinal illness. We hung out with Chris, the Philadelphia courier, nearly every day, until he rode on to Pokhara.

Next: Pokhara

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