It’s plain cold in our flat just now, it always is morning time, but the sun outside is really quite hot, problem is I can’t see the laptop screen outside, it’s too sunny!

All were alive and well when I arrived home. Dear daughter revealed a few minor mistruths about recent exams so we’re working on those, my Srimati – wife, was well and had managed to hold things together despite my prolonged absence.

Load shedding or power cuts are the bain of our lives just now and I still have more work to do in a solar powered battery system to keep us in volts when the ‘leccy man ‘throws the switch’. Until today we got power over two periods, both of which were 4 hours, but at different ends of the day, often in the early hours, so we have to plug things to charge whenever we can, mobiles and the like.

I enjoyed a two day long motorcycle tour into the mountains with a couple of friends last weekend. We rode north into the Langtang National Park, though our fun later ended in tears when after a few whiskeys we overstepped the mark and Sherap fell to the floor and hurt his wrist.

A personal highlight of our weekend in the mountains was a tour into the tunnels and machine rooms of a small though significant hydro-power station. Water stored behind a dam, squirt it through a turbine and out comes electricity, brilliant! The duty mechanical engineer showed us round, explaining the machinery and systems, excellent, I was in my element, was it time perhaps to turn back to my past and start working again with turbine power.

I had to leave the next day and rode the route back down to Kathmandu alone. 65kms of broken road and a further 75km of testy twisting mountain roads, though largely at least black-topped.

Sherap and Lobsang were to leave their motorbikes behind and return by bus the next day. A bone jarring 12 hours of bumps and rattles on a rough mountain road, thankfully I was on the bike, in the driving seat. The route crosses some of the worst landslide sites I’ve seen in Nepal. To ride the bus and get there safely is to have experienced divine intervention. I’ve ridden the bus before on this route, though never again, go over the edge and the drop is bottomless.

It was after 2pm when I reached the half way point and stopped for some lunch. Dal bhaat tarkari - Nepal’s staple - with a small plate of local chicken; tasty but tough and all for 180rps about £1.60.

With Trishuli behind me I could press on home, but it wasn’t till sundown that I finally made it, tired, covered in dust and with hands still ringing from a million bumps and shakes on such a bumpy road. The bike was still running but quite worn out. A trip to the mechanic was at the top of my list, but it could wait till tomorrow, I needed my bed.

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