45 minute time zone?!

We've been in Nepal for a few days now. We kept wondering why everyone was late for everything. Then we were on our rafting trip and another girl kindly informed us that the time in Nepal is GMT + 5:45, not + 6 hours. So, we were 15 minutes early for the couple of times we had to meet up with tour guides etc. We must have looked like eager beavers when we showed up for our 6 a.m. rafting meet-up at 5:45 in the morning. Things you wished you had known earlier... It only took us 3 days to get on the right time. I did wonder why every clock we saw had the "wrong" time. I knew India had GMT + 5:30 but had forgotten that Nepal was even stranger.

Our rafting trip took us on the same road back towards the Tibet border. On the way, we got stopped by the Maoists! Huh? I thought they just signed a peace deal. Anyway, we collected all the receipts from the people on the bus and showed it to the Maoists. It seemed like everyone besides us had paid the Maoists. Mainly because everyone had gone trekking in Nepal. I guess that's the tradeoff: trek in Tibet and sleep in sub-freezing temps or trek in Nepal and sleep in warm accommodation but pay the Maoists. I think I would have rather paid. Well, it's a good thing everyone kept their receipts because the Maoists let us go without paying anything further. Fortunately we didn't get stopped on the way back to Kathmandu. I guess we were just lucky not to have been stopped on our way into Kathmandu from Tibet the other day. Turns out the going rate to pay the Maoists is 100 Nepal Rupees a day (about $1.40) per person and most of the people had gone for 7-15 days.