Although Darjeeling is near the Nepal border, getting to Kathmandu turned into a bit of a mission. To get to the nearest crossing that can be used by foreigners, my travelling companions (Denna and Helly) and I took a three-hour shared jeep ride and a one-hour bus journey. We filled out the immigration forms by candlelight and then entered the twenty-sixth country I've visited since starting my career break in September 2009.
After spending the night at the border town of Kakarbhitta, the plan for the next day was to be driven in a jeep to Kathmandu. Frustratingly, that 600 kilometre trip ended up taking twenty hours because we were stuck from 9am until 4:30pm at a roadblock that was set up in what seemed like the middle of nowhere by locals angry at a recent government decision. This sort of thing is common in Nepal, so the locals just relaxed, waited and asked "What to do?" in a rhetorical rather than a solution-searching way.
There was another strike during one of our days in Kathmandu, meaning all businesses stayed closed until the evening. This was organised by students in protest against high gas prices and "load shedding" (the policy where the electricity supply is turned off for up to 18 hours a day for different areas at different times).
The Thamel area of Kathmandu reminded me of other tourist hotspots on the world's backpacker circuit. Like Cusco in Peru and Siem Reap in Cambodia, it is filled with Western bars and restaurants, souvenir sellers, internet cafes, travel agents and trekking shops. While obviously this is not the "real" Nepal, we enjoyed treating ourselves to things unavailable in Darjeeling, like falafel wraps and decent pizza. 
Spending a week with Denna and Helly in Kathmandu, which was a fun and easy reintroduction to backpacking, highlighted how different it is to travel in a group compared to going alone. Because we did not need to, we didn't interact with any other travellers. But when the girls left to return to Darjeeling, I quickly reverted to being the sociable solo traveller - I chatted with three Irish sisters on the six hour bus journey to Chitwan National Park, and once there I teamed up with a Polish girl for an elephant ride and a one and a half day jungle walk. We set off on that walk after a three minute briefing from our guide: "If a sloth bear attacks, make yourself big and be loud; if a rhino charges, run in zigzags and hide behind a big tree; if you see tiger, keep eye contact and back away slowly". While we saw lots of animals, including rhinos, wild pigs, and several types of deer and birds, as far as we know the closest we came to a tiger was seeing a footprint in the mud.
But the main reason why I had wanted to come to Nepal was to trek. So after an enjoyable day cycling around the villages near Chitwan, I hit for Pokhara - the lakeside town overlooked by the Annapurna range.
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