Happy New Year (General Strike)

Happy New Year good people! I trust you have all had a fun festive time and are suitably stuffed on pies port and the rest. May the year ahead be better than the last, unless of course it was really good - you can't ask for too much.

So we're in Pokhara, the location of the Rickshaw Run start line. We're supposed to be on the road at the moment but.........................there's a GENERAL STRIKE! They do strikes properly here. There's none of this boring old placard waving and group sing songs. There's nationwide lock-down which means no vehicles are allowed on the road! Oh, and the last time this happened (a few weeks back) about 70-100 people were killed. So we're steering clear of gatherings for today! Apparently everything will be back up and running tomorrow so we should start our trek then.
Pokhara's a great place to be stuck though -it's surrounded by mountains and has a very picturesque lake - so we can't really complain. We went to a great New Years Eve party last night, got rather drunk and danced about to a Nepalese rock band and several drunken Scottish types performing a seemingly endless version of Auld Lang Syne. It was just like watching Jools Holland really.