The sun shone down as brightly as I smiled at each and every passer by. So many greeted me with "Namaste," and, though I still don't know the literal meaning of this word, I replied, "Namaastay!" It didn't take long for us to make several friends, Shree, who offered us a free map and to help us find a hotel, and Bisho who wanted to hook us up with trekking information. Our new friends were very friendly, in fact they followed us everywhere. We went to lunch and turned around to find Bisho had followed us in and waited for us to finish while sitting at the next table. This was my first taste of pushy Nepali touts, a.k.a. STALKERS!

Not to give the wrong impression, there's nothing dangerous about these people touting goods and services of one kind or another. It's just that they are annoying, time consuming, and if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile (make that a kilometer, we're in Nepal after all!). Consequently, our first two days in Thamel were spent being dragged into tourist offices by Shree and Bisho. What's worse, they were fiercely competitive with each other and tried to make us feel guilty for being with anyone but themselves. As if I wanted to be entrapped by either of them! A warning to the starry eyed traveler of Nepal...brush up on your cold shoulder technique if you want to have any control over your time and money.

We weathered that storm, and I'm even starting to recover from the realization that all of these friendly Nepalese people only want me for my money. These days Thamel is more mobbed by tourists anyway and this takes the attention off of me. Now I'm free to window shop and walk the streets at my leisure. I'm also very willing to shop for people back home and send it. You can email me if you're interested!