Traveling to Nepal

November 1-3, 2019

It isn’t easy to get to Nepal. My friend, Kathy, and I departed from St. Louis at 1:45 pm on Friday and after a four hour layover in O’Hare, we boarded our Qatar Airways flight for Doha. Though the scheduled flight time is 13 1/2 hours, we made it in under twelve…thank goodness for those winds we have been having!

It turns out that they are doing work on the runways on Kathmandu, which has resulted in flight schedules being changed….what was originally going to be a few hours in Doha turned out to be twelve hours there. I had the foresight to book a room at the in airport hotel. This turned out to be one of my better moves.

The safety video on Qatar Airways is rather mundane compared to many airlines, it doesn’t feature a catchy tune, dancers, or comic book characters,,,, just a regular guy telling us what do to in case of an emergency.

Upon arrival in Doha, I learned that Kathy had been quite sick during the second half of our flight. Since we weren’t sitting together, I had been unaware of her circumstances until landing. So, immediately upon checking into the hotel and exploring the options, we decided our best move was to ask for a visit from the airport medic. The hotel staff called him and within a few minutes he arrived at the door. He pulled his bike right into the room!

The bicycling medic checked her vital signs and all was normal. He gave the option of going to the on site airport clinic but Kathy decided to rest and see how she felt after that.

I thought my best move was to give her time to rest. The hotel has a lovely gym, pool, and spa. I opted for some time on the elliptical and then had dinner. Upon returning to the room, the patient was definitely looking perkier.

We had landed at about 4 pm local time and after getting back to the room it was about 7:30. I decided to go to sleep for as long as possible since we needed to head to our gate by about 2 am. When I woke up at about 12:30, Kathy was already awake. She was feeling much better and was ready to have something to eat. …. she headed for the airport Burger King; I showered and got ready and we met at the gate.

Even though it was the middle of the night, the airport was a beehive of activity.

Our last flight for the day was uneventful and we arrived in Kathmandu by 11 am local time, about 45 minutes late due to having to circle the airport before landing. Interestingly, the time in Nepal is ten hours and 45 minutes ahead of St. Louis time. I’ve been to countries that have times on the half hour difference from home, but never 3/4 hour. It took nearly 36 hours from the time I left my house until landing in Nepal, but we finally made it! Little did we know what adventures lay ahead…just to get out of the airport! We disembarked and took a bus to the terminal, where this welcome sign greeted us:

We made our way into the terminal, along with people from numerous other flights… to say it was a chaotic scene would be generous. We had to fill out landing forms, go to a kiosk to fill out immigration forms, then get in line to pay for our visas, before proceeding through the immigration line. There were no organized lines, just a sea of tired humanity pushing forward at each step.

About 45 minutes to an hour after landing, we made it through the entire process. Next, we went downstairs and, after passing a sign for the “Gold, Silver, Diamond Metal Testing Room”, we found ourselves in another line, this one for security screening. We had to walk through a metal detector and put our carry on bags through screening. I found it interesting that it didn’t seem to matter if you set off the alarm or not, they waved everyone through. Also, I noted that the baggage screener wasn’t paying any attention to the screen. At the end of this process, we found ourselves in the baggage claim area.

We did find our luggage without too much trouble and made our way outside where we were met by a representative from the travel company, who greeted us each with a red scarf. I gather this is a traditional Nepalese way of welcoming guests because we received another at the hotel.

Our hotel is only one kilometer from the airport. The traffic was crazy. It reminded me a bit of the traffic in India where the laws are more like suggestions.

Maryse arrived yesterday and greeted us in the lobby. It is wonderful to see her! For new readers, she and I met four years ago on a trip to the Middle East and have done a trip together each year since. Because of the aforementioned runway work, her flights had been changed as well. For some reason she was rerouted to arrive exactly 24 hours before Kathy and me.

The hotel is lovely, a quiet spot made up of several historic buildings with pretty courtyards and a nice pool area. You would never know we are right in the middle of the city. We enjoyed lunch in one of the courtyards before taking a bit of time to get settled.

I have spent my down time going to the gym and relaxing. I am heading out shortly to meet Maryse and Kathy for dinner. I don’t imagine any of us will make a late night of it. Tomorrow we will meet our guide and begin our Kathmandu sightseeing!