We've returned from our weekend, which consisted of an unbelievable quantity of trance music. Don't get us wrong, we love our techno, but the party's system cranked out rather monotonous beats virtually 24/7. So we got to dance a lot, which fortunately was our primary intention, though the second night got pretty intensely rained out. The location was beautiful though, in the woods a few kilometers short of Nagerkot, and despite a general lack of flat ground we found (for our small rented tent) a semi-level patch down a slippery slope behind the stage, with a nice view through the hills into the Kathmandu Valley. That turned out to be the only view we really had, as clouds/haze denied us any chance of seeing Everest from Nagarkot , even in the painfully early morning.
The music was exclusively psychedelic trance, with the only exception being a Japanese DJ that played each morning at 10 am, so during his 2 hours of house/electro we danced our hardest. Also, apparently on this continent, when a party is advertised as Oct. 11/12/13, that means the music starts late in the day on the 11th - we arrived on the provided transportation around 5 pm - but ends by noon on the 13th. Though, honestly, 2 days of repetitive electronic music (which by its very nature is going to be mostly repetitive anyways), we were quite tired and sore from dancing. And our tent leaking on the 2nd night, soaking the majority of our clothes and blankets, really livened up the party. We had to sleep under a main tent area for a while until the rain stopped, before we could slog back down the muddy hill, dry our tent, and return to bed!
Anderson also magnetically attracted leeches, which was made more impressive by the fact that Liz avoided them entirely. While dancing on Thursday night, his sandal started getting rather sticky - much of his foot was covered in blood, from at least three leaking leech wounds! Rather hilarious, really, but when you're on leech ten or so in a day it starts to lose much of the appeal! Thankfully some of the Nepalis we'd been dancing with were very helpful, so locating the nearest water source wasn't too difficult.
There was some rather ridiculous dancing that we witnessed, "natives" trying a bit too hard to fit in... is techno dancing something that is ultimately culturally-specific? The crowd was, overall, international, although mostly consisting of Israelis. We were the sole Americans, but there were a variety of Europeans, and a large contingent of Nepalis. Mostly couples, except for the Nepalis which were, per the usual, large flocks of men. Its interesting how Western culture is not-so-gradually being adopted, but the subcontinent generally seems to struggle with escaping its traditional gender segregation. The result here is the Western women usually had some eager Nepalis dancing around them, though Anderson, in a truly hilarious moment, got what can only be described as "gay-grinded" by one dance enthusiast. We are still laughing... :-)
So overall it was a good time, food was cheap and tasty, sound system was quite solid, ultimately, weather aside, the lack of musical diversity was the biggest frustration. For food the fried buff momos were the best we've ever had, and the potato sticks, before a mid-party price increase, were also delicious. And fortunately the still-pounding psy-trance at 6 am couldn't faze our highly-effective ear-plugs!

Now we're back in Kathmandu, same same but same, our documents have arrived in Korea, so employment is moving forward gradually, still will be a few more weeks before we can depart, most likely. We are looking at going on a rafting trip, one-day, on the Bhote Khosi River, although currently the prices we've heard are all ridiculously high, so we shall see. At least our almost-nightly rooftop-yoga sessions, with kites flying high in the wind all around us, are free. Being cheap is still our primary goal, since we don't yet know our departure date, but we know of a variety of cheap restaurants (last night was "sekuwa" - meat/potato kebabs), drink boiled/filtered water for only 5 Rs/liter, eat half-price pastries (after 8/9 pm), and mostly engage in cheap activities (reading secondhand books, practicing Korean, walking aimlessly), so being frugal is practically second nature at this point.
Found a cool link for our nerdier readers (we know, that's all of ya'll :-), it allows you, in theory, to send free SMS text messages anywhere in North America. Hopefully it works...

More news when there is news,
Peace
A&E