Kind of a preamble - or, events up until I got on the plane

Well, it was all supposed to be not too serious. Lonely Planet talkboard saying life going on as usual, new ceasefire started, checked FCO - no serious travel advisory.

Mum and Dad have obviously been having kittens. Dad's been forwarding links to BBC news articles that don't really put the situation at it's best (BTW, is my Dad the only person in the world who clicks the 'email this article to a friend' link instead of just copy and pasting? Or do other people's Dads do it too?) Mum sending me impossibly large boxes of Thorntons (it's obviously one of those Mum things - 'I cannot protect her from bullets, but I can feed her up').

It'll be FINE, I've been telling them. The news exaggerates everything. It's no reason to cancel a trip. I'd be like all those Americans who wouldn't come to Britain because they thought the IRA would blow them up. This argument didn't have much noticeable affect.

'Anyway', I said (thinking this tack would work on Dad, at least) 'it'll be really cheap!' 'Why don't you go to Tenerife and stay with cousin Joan instead?' Said Dad. Why would I prefer to go to the far-flung ancient mountain kingdom of Nepal than go and stay with my Dad's cousin who I've never met, on Tene-fucking-rife? Goodness, I can't think of a single reason, but if anyone else can, perhaps they could drop my Dad a line...

'Also,' I said (trying a different angle), 'I was fine when I went to Kashmir, wasn't I?' It turned out that reminding them of previous times I've decided to go to warzones* against their advice wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped. Nor was pointing out that at least I'm telling them this time.

Anyway, I told them that a ceasefire had been declared. That the Thorntree reckoned it was fine. That the FCO didn't have it on their list of places not to go to. That I'd checked and read all these things and wasn't just going off blithely. I don't think any of this made much odds, but they realised they couldn't really stop me.

I thought I'd done a reasonable job of calming them down. And then what happens? The Bandh declared for this week, which I knew was happening, all gets a bit more serious than usual, curfews declared, demonstrations defying the curfew, police shooting at demonstrators (only with rubber bullets! Although they have proved fatal in some cases...)...

And you know how since the re-design the Guardian has a big double-page photo in the middle? Of course on Tuesday they decided to have a photo of riot police beating up protestors in Nepal. I discovered this while sitting in the departure lounge at Heathrow. As if to just stress Mum out more! No more standing up for the Guardian when Al moans about them for ME, I can tell you!

So, then I got on the plane...

*I'll point out that neither Kashmir in 1990 nor Nepal today were/are really warzones. More areas 'experiencing ongoing political violence'. I'm just using the term for humourous effect.