Given that I rolled out of bed at 4am on Monday morning to take a flight to get to Bhutan, and it is now more than 24 hours later and I am stuck in a hotel in Kathmandu – with a wireless connection – I thought I would pass the time giving you all an update through a new blog space.

Bhutan has one thing in plenty – and that is rain. The post below shows that it has some of the wettest seasons to be found anywhere in the world and today it is particularly bad (good?) as there has been a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal which has now settled on top of Bhutan’s only international airport, Paro.

So having left home in Bangalore at 0515, the flight to Delhi was uneventful and the layover was all as planned. The flight makes a stop to drop and pick passengers in Kathmandu, Nepal and so we landed at about 2pm Monday, stayed on the tarmac in the drizzling rain while the pilot worked out whether the rain and clouds in Paro were acceptable. We waited until about 5pm at which point it was clear we could not land on Monday (Paro does not have any lights for nighttime landing).

We are staying at a decent hotel in the middle of Kathmandu. If it was not raining constantly, I would go take a walk around though I have been here a few times before. We were up at 5am to go back to the airport and made it onto the bus in the hotel car park – but by 0630 the message from Paro was that the airfield is still shrouded in cloud. We are waiting to see if we can leave by mid morning Tuesday.

I will head out and see if there is any decent coffee to be had in Kathmandu if we have a few more hours – but first I will need to buy a good brolly!

Staying at www.annapurna-hotel.com but don’t believe everything you read on the website!