Billed as Handphun’s Last Call, this epic easily outshone the disaster of last week. Longer, higher and smellier, all was forgiven in the light of the fantastic fare served up by Handphun after the run.

The late change of venue forced by last week’s Hare stealing this week’s run (and considerable quantities of Grumblewald’s ale in the process) was fortunate, as the planned On-In site outside Handphun’s old house was besieged by revellers celebrating a local Newari Festival rather noisily, and the planned finish site at Grumblewald’s had run out of beer!

An indeterminate number of checks were announced with at least two holding, and three for the walkers on pink paper. First paper was off to the north and down onto the Bagmati flood plain, with an impatient Fox in the van, but then from Check 1 the trail swung east, skirting Sano Kokhana before turning south and heading up into Kokhana itself. It was from here that Gun Runner did a runner, pleading the after effects of a week of food poisoning as an excuse for not being able to run.

Out of Kokhana to the west and heading for the suspension bridge, the pack managed to catch the walkers being led by Lazy Towed, but were taken off the main trail and south up towards the suburbs of Bungamati. Despite the accusations on the website of confusion reigning with runs on consecutive weeks from sites so close together, this was about the closest this week’s run came to last week’s, and for much of the time there were a couple of rivers in between the two. Holding Check 6 below Bungamati brought the slower runners back up with the FRBs before we all (minus KL who’d apparently gone walkabout) headed back down towards the river. Check 8 was a massive back check that had a similar effect, seeing tail enders Lao Lover and his Lover leading the way to the new bridge. However, a recalcitrant Tesch didn’t like the idea of crossing the bridge so they were swiftly back at the back! Half a dozen of the tail enders peeled off at this point and headed directly for the On-In, thus missing by far the best bit of the run. Check 9 kept nobody guessing but Check 10, yet another back check, saw Shrivelled heading on up towards Haatiban whilst everyone else followed the paper.

Holding Check 11 offered the pack welcome rest after a longish climb and some good views across Kathmandu. Once Moosette and a struggling Griot, fresh from a few weeks’ debauchery, had arrived the Hare invited the pack to check it out, and proffered the advice that it wasn’t uphill. Sceptics Shrivelled, Hurry K, Rotter and virgin Billie promptly headed off uphill towards the nearby Dakshinkali road whilst the true believers, led by Keeled Over, set off along the correct and paper bescattered trail. This quickly ran downhill to emerge once again on the dirt road leading towards the penstocks and power house, just above the leper hospital and Check 12.

From here it was a pretty straightforward run in via checks 13, 14 and 15, which had been inserted to slow down the FRBs a bit, and the seasonal bridge back to the On-In.

Wonderful surprises awaited the knackered pack in the form of genuine Norwegian salmon – a complete smorgasbord, if that’s the correct Scandy terminology. Handphun had hijacked the Ambassador’s chef and brought along Sunita to hand it all out to a thoroughly undeserving bunch. Once the orgy of eating had slowed down a bit, the Master called the circle to order and was trying to get the Hares into the centre, but was rudely interrupted by Keeled Over who only did it to ensure his weekly free beer. Eventually things got more or less sorted out and a thoroughly underrated 9.9 (in the Hare's view only - GM) was awarded after a brief discussion.

A number of virgins followed – Billie who is a freelance journalist of dubious extraction looking for a story, and who is disgustingly fit (unlike her mate Shrivelled) and Rabi, Jean-Christophe and Shoba, one of whom was daft enough to come along with Beership Down.

The GM then decided to award the Hashit, but had to be given a down-down of his own first for not knowing which mug was the Hashit. Through a truly democratic process worthy of our host government, it was awarded to Handphun for no real reason whatsoever other than she won’t bring it back next week. Immediately following this prestigious award, an even more prestigious rug was awarded to Handphun as thanks from Tibetgal for her going away. Judging by it’s size, it should fit nicely wall-to-wall in the 16th floor diplomatic abode in Bangkok.

At some stage after this there was also a bit of judicious beer slinging by Shrivelled and Grumblewald, possibly something to do with last weeks raid on the Grumble abode.

Beership Down received yet another down-down for some unremembered crime, as did Jean-Christophe and Peter.

A special thanks to the Norwegian Ambassador for a) allowing his chef to prepare the fantastic array of post-hash grub and b) for finally getting Handphun posted somewhere else. Thanks also to the Hares for an unbelievably phenomenal run, worth far more than the miserly 9.9 awarded. (OK, from now on I will ask each week's hares to provide comments on their own run to provide some counterbalance to Towed's farcical exaggerations - GM)