Well, this is interesting. It seems as thought the fabric of this country has somewhat disintegrated during my bout in the mountains. I'm currently in a town called Beni, at the end of the trek, from where I'm supposed to be able to catch a bus to Pokhara, Nepal's "Other City." Unfortunately, all busses and taxis on the highways have been burned in accordance with a Maoist-issued strike. Those "crazy guys" decided to march into Kathmandu with their big guns and their new found 7-party friends (representing the rest of nepal) and have been demanding the King to step down. The King, who finally said something yesterday after 6 days of violent protests, is offering to present the country with a new, brand new, rigged election. Needless to say, the maoists are keeping their strike going strong. So I'm stuck. No busses, no taxis, all the shops are closed, basically all I got out here are the hotels that are still open (tourists are still catered to) and a few black-market shops that have to be extremely careful the maoists don't find them open ("or else").

I came down from the mountain just a few hours ago, hoping that this week-long strike would have been over once the king spoke last night. Last night, by the way, was new years out here, making it the third new years I've seen in the past 5 months. Neato. Anyway, the strike has been declared indefinate, so tomorrow morning I'm WALKING to Pokhara. It's 84km (50 miles) and should take three days, but there's really nothing else to do. From there I might be able to catch an airplane out of this country before the whole place blows up. Basically, nobody has any idea what's going on except that nobody's allowed to work, which makes for a very scared but extremely drunk "of age" community, and a whole lot of kids running around playing in the street. I'll give you a whole lot of comments on the situation once I get to Pokhara, but the demand for internet here is extremely high so I should take my leave. In case any of you are worrying, though, I'm staying out of the police riots and keeping my head down. My goal at the moment is just to find a way out of this country to move on.

If not, fortunately I recently bought the 5th Harry Potter book, which should keep me busy for about a week of downtime. Wish me luck.