Bandha, the citywide curfew here in Kathmandu, is in place until 8p tonight. My flight to Lukla is cancelled indefinitely. I’ve got some days to wait, and I’m still hoping to get to the Everest trek. Fortunately I’ve moved to the famous Kathmandu Guest House where the guests are mainly stranded trekkers, western media and press, and some NGO volunteer-types. It’s a refuge for foreigners beset by the curfew.

Not everyone is waiting it out, of course. At breakfast in the cafe, members of the press, strapped with video and camera equipment wolfed their eggs, their red press badges dangling about thier necks, and traded jabs about yesterday’s action. By nine, they had their Range Rovers roaring into the streets. Two fellow trekkers I’d befriended at breakfast yesterday came sauntering back into the gates around 1p. They had played the confused foreign girls routine with the police blockades and made it all the way to Durbar Square.

But for most of these inmates who are trying to get someplace else, it’s a waiting game. While the police scapple with protesters throughout the city, inside the gated complex of balconied hotel rooms, courtyards, an arcade of shops (internet, bookstore, travel agents, guides, a cafe and a bar), we’ve been lounging with our paperbacks on the lawn and studying the monkeys on the rooftops as they groom one another. It’s everything a traveller might want in case of a lockdown. We rouse ourselves for CNN at the top of the hour and trade stale gossip about what’s happening at the airport. Later today there will be a screening of Hotel Rwanda in the lounge. Don Cheedle plays a Hutu manager of a French Hotel in Rwanda who tries to keep the hotel running while his country descends into political chaos. That should be a nice escape before the yoga class at 4:30.