Tribhuvan Airport, Kathmandu, Nepal

"Driving in Nepal, not so good," the taxi driver says.

He swerves to avoid a 200-year old woman walking in the middle of the street, honks at a bus that’s coming straight at us, and passes a motorcycle with four unhelmeted passengers, two of them children. "Roads, like, bumpy."

He seems to be implying that the near-death experiences we are having by the second are not, in themselves, undesirable; just the unpaved roads.

After about ten minutes he pulls up outside large red metal gates: Dragon Guest House, owned by Wengyal Lama and his family.