Destination – Nepal
–
Kathmandu – Are we there Yeti?
We decide to leave
India in style. We pay (a lot for local standards) for a taxi from Darjeeling
in India to Kathmandu in Nepal, door to door. It’s nice to indulge sometimes. The hotel organizes
it for us and so we wake up at 4.30AM to leave at 5AM. We have two drivers, we
were told, for safety reasons but we have a feeling one of them is just getting
a free ride to Nepal. This feeling is,
of course, later confirmed.
All is going
really well, we cross the border and get to Nepal. Just after the border
crossing, one of our “drivers” explains to us that there is a transport strike
in the region and we cannot get to Kathmandu by car. After a lot of confusion,
talking to a lot of different people, including the police, we get the
confirmation, no way by land to Kathmandu. We explore all the options and
decide to go to a travel agency and try to catch a flight. Testing, testing, calling
on all your Buddhist skills, patience, compassion, serenity now, serenity now!
We get the tickets, we even get most of the money back from the taxi driver (small
miracles), but how are we going to get to the airport if there is no transport
available at all?
Serenity now! Breathe in, then out! As everyone knows, border
towns are not usually the nicest places in the cosmos… In and out… The travel
agent then suggests that we take a “man powered” rickshaw, in other words, a
man with a pushbike, (tricycle) for the two of us and our luggage. We think it’s
insane, but they say, “it’s only an hour”. So, we jump in the rickshaw, paid
for by the travel agent. We don’t have any more Indian rupees and there’s no
ATM on the border town for us to get Nepalese rupees, serenity now, in and out.
The rickshaw driver is almost dying as the “one hour” journey to the airport takes
over two hours. At some stage, we think we are going to miss the plane (only to
find out later that domestic planes in Nepal are always running late). We tip the “driver” nicely
with whatever small change in dollars we have to placate our guilt trip.
We get to “the
airport” with our “Yeti Airlines” tickets (are we there yeti?) just to find out
that our flight, as you guessed, has been delayed by two hours. The airport is
absolutely insane, so many people, so old and run down, so small and confusing.
You can smell the piss from the toilets 20 metres away. Makes you wonder where the airport taxes we
pay are going (probably down the toilet). On top of it all, as you know by now,
Paul does not like flying. Ok, understatement, he hates flying. Serenity at anytime now! We need to pay airport taxes
and have no rupees, I find a $US5 bill and negotiate the price with the airline
guy, breathe in and out. We got
water and some snacks we packed for the long taxi ride, good one as there is
not even water for us to buy at the airport. The plane arrives and it’s a
propeller driven very little plane, for 20 people. We’ve taken bigger rickshaws in
this trip. Two hours later we
board the “toy plane” (it’s all keeping with the theme after the “toy train”
ride in Darjeeling). Yeah, lots of emotion and it’s just after 2PM. What else
now? Yeah, of course, a lot of
turbulence to make things even more fun! It’s a 45
minutes flight, but it feels so much longer.
Anyway, after
being tested in every way, shape and form, serenity finally comes to us as we
land in Kathmandu. We go to a prepaid taxi booth just to realize we have no
local currency. The guy from the booth
says, “no problem”, you can pay the driver when you get there and stop at an
ATM. Looks like we passed our “test” as after that, everything begins to run
smoothly. The taxi ride is great, the ATM works and we have cash again.
The
hotel is nice (Blue Horizon Hotel) and we go for a walk around Thamel and love the area; lots of little shops
and cafes, more tourists than you can count, all very nice and civilized. We go
to “Fire and Ice” and have the best pizza and pasta we've had in the last 11
months. One can only fully appreciate the true beauty of Bolognese pasta after
spending 6 months in a mostly vegetarian country, it’s almost poetic! We get
some diet Pepsi and have it with the last of the Indian brandy. We think we are
really going to like this place.
Ok, before I
forget, it’s important to say that, in Kathmandu, you only get 4 hours of
electricity a day, and the time changes everyday. The first day was OK, 6 to
10PM, the second day 4 to 8PM and the 3rd day, 3 to 6 PM. What do you
do after that? Read? Watch TV? Internet? You can’t, you don’t have electricity,
got it? Anyway, besides the blackouts, we enjoy our 3 days in Kathmandu, the
food everywhere is great and so is the shopping. We’ll be happy to come back
here before we leave Nepal.
