For starters, I had a long journey ahead: a flight to Dubai, 4 hour stopover and then another flight to Kathmandu. Till the bery departure I was checking emails and messages to see wether the last minute epic fuck up at work got sorted or not. So happy to leave this place! It reminded me of the good old times when leaving to a far away place would give me such a blissful feeling of relief.
During the flight I couldn’t even take a nap. Not because of the children in the same row, playing and screaming for the entire flight duration but mostly because the tension in my head and neck would not leave at all. As if the adrenaline was still keeping me awake.
Stories from the movies that I watched during the flight got all mixed up with the troubling issues at work and the thought „what am I doing, going for a lonely trip to Nepal?!”.
My eyes were stinging, my head was feverish, my cheecks and neck were sore.
How will Nepal look like? What are Nepalese people like? Am I sure I want to spend 10 days in a monastery?
And again: what am I doing...?!
Stop in Dubai wasn’t tiring at all. I hang around the Paul cafe and a duty free store, smelling each bottle of perfume until I could smell nothing and bored, went to sit at the gate and stare at the departure board. (I discovered very nice perfume called Loewe 001).
I purchased a syrup for allergy (I had no idea that Zyrtec is available also as a syrup!) just in case they put too much monosodian glutaminate in the food and I ate the biggest cashew nuts I’ve ever seen.
The flight to Kathmandu was delayed by slightly over 30 minutes. Not only was the information on the board very confusing but also there was no communication whatsoever. We just stood in line and waited, which at that point already felt quite familiar (ever travelled to third world countries?).
The plane... well I have to say that the aircraft itself was very plain. Straight chairs, no screens, no foldable desks. But honestly at this point all I wanted was to finally fall asleep. I only remember being woken up by a steward, randomly offering a meal, which I equally randomly ate and went back to sleep.
In Katmandu I landed at 9:30 local time.
‚The most dangerous airport in the world’, as they say. In the entire sanctuary-like arrivals terminal the automatic machines for visa application, requiring to hit ‚cancel’ button whenever the error appeared, seemed somewhat hilarious but I’m sure in a way, sped things up. My visa for 30 days was admitted.
The first day I spent entirely on preparing myself for the next 4 days in the mountains, starting from finding the agent to collect the ticket and detailed itinerary information, getting a local sim card, to visiting over 20 ATMs, ending up with all my cards blocked, having to have the money sent by my boyfriend via Western Union.
My first encounter with Katmandu was therefore very hectic: the streets were full of dust and dirt, the motorbikes, rickshaws and cars all rushing through the streets like crazy made me feel dizzy. Finding concrete places and people in such inconcrete city, where maps can’t help (each looks different, the streets run at different angles and landmarks are marked in different spots), and streets carry no name signs, seemed like quite a riddle to solve.
That night I went to sleep early, as I had a 4:15 am wake up alarm set up. Let’s see if my worried head will let me get a good night’s sleep...
