{"id":319,"date":"2012-02-09T13:16:01","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T13:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=319"},"modified":"2020-08-23T02:32:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T02:32:10","slug":"in-the-thick-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=319","title":{"rendered":"In the thick of it!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:30px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=319\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>The first 48 hours have been anything but dull!<\/p>\n<p>Apart from the intermittent electricity shortages plaguing Kathmandu there seems to be little or petrol available. I could only buy one litre to get me started &amp; I very soon ran out on the way from the airport. While sitting on the side of the road contemplating whether to spend the night where I was, a passerby stopped &amp; asked what I was doing. Of course when I told him he said it was too dangerous and to follow him to his hotel. Grateful &amp; too tired to argue we pushed the bike for about two kms. He gave me a special deal on the price of a room as I was such &#8220;an old man&#8221;. I never managed to find the hotel I was booked into unfortunately and next morning amidst horrendous city traffic the clutch seized. With the help of two great Nepalese guys who incidentally refused payment, I had it back on the road. Finally found my way out of the mayhem &amp; headed towards Pokhara. The late start coupled with several badly broken sections meant I wasn&#8217;t going to make it to my destination in one day. A particularly steep descent took me half and hour to make it to the bottom. I can imagine how many hours it would take to get to the top &#8211; guess I have that to look forward to sometime over the next few days!<\/p>\n<p>I passed two buses which had collided head-on obviously trying to use the same side of the road, but given I was focused on keeping upright while balancing a spare can of fuel I figured a Kodak moment was out of the question. I finally made it to a hotel strangely named the Pokhara Inn even though I there was still 130kms to go to my destination! The manager spoke great English &amp; made me very welcome. I&#8217;m knackered but after a chat on skype to Lynne I can chalk this up as a tough ride but the FN did a fantastic job. My first impressions &#8211; people curious, friendly and helpful. The traffic is much like Bali, but worse! It&#8217;s preparing me for India though I get a tad nervous remembering what others motorcyclists have said about Nepal being a piece of cake compared to India. Ah well, one challenge at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first 48 hours have been anything but dull! Apart from the intermittent electricity shortages plaguing Kathmandu there seems to be little or petrol available. I could only buy one litre to get me started &amp; I very soon ran out on the way from the airport. While sitting on the side of the road [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[50,49,213,48],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nepal","tag-journey","tag-kathmandu","tag-map","tag-nepal-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1258,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/1258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}