Nepal - "The North Face" Counterfeit Capital of the World

Ok, now for some stories from Nepal.

On January 11th, I arrived at Kathmandu airport from Delhi. I was picked up by the owner of the guesthouse I booked on-line Raj. We arrived at the Kathmandu Peace Guesthouse around 5:30pm and at 6pm I met with the travel manager, Suman, over a small pot of steaming hot black tea (national drink of Nepal). Within an hour Suman had sketched out a great 14 day plan for my short stay in Nepal. My tour began with two days of site seeing in Kathmandu, followed by a day to travel to Pokhara (trekking capital of the western region) and 2 days of site seeing, 6 days trekking in the Annapurna region, 3 days in Chitwan National Park for an elephant safari, nature walk, and various other activities, then travel back to Kathmandu for two days of rest before flying back the Delhi.
Early the next morning I met with CB Kahn, my first guide, who took me to great landmarks of the Kathmandu Valley region. On the 12th we started with the famous Buddhist Monkey Temple, Boudhanath Stupa, the Hindu Pashupati Nath Temple where ritual cremations occur on a daily basis and Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square. On the 13th we ventured outside Kathmandu to the cities of Patan and Bhaktapur where we saw a variety of great Buddhist and Hindu temple built by the great Malla king dynasty.
CB has been a trekking guide for about 9 years. He's incredibly knowledgeable about Nepal, but he was eager to get out of the city and take me on my trek. Due to the considerable amount of industry growth in Nepal over the past 20 years, there are various rules that trekking companies need to follow in order for the guides to be rotated and given a "fair" shot at the foreign money coming in. In short, he told me that if I requested him to Suman that he would be my guide for the trek, but in reality, when I met with Suman later that evening, he shot down my request before I could even utter it. I met my official trekking guide Dipak that night and the following morning at 6:30 am, we set out on our adventure.