After a long journey from Mumbai we finally made it to Kathmandu today. I'm traveling with three other SWE people from my trip to India, and we got off to a little bit of a rocky start. First, we had ordered a couple vans to take our SWE group to the airport. There were 11 of us with lots of bags, so we definitely needed two vans, and we also had two different flight times. The group going to Nepal needed to be on a plane that left at 11pm, while everyone else left India at 1am. One of the buses showed up on time, but when we asked about the other one we kept getting the answer of "5 minutes" or "20 minutes". The Nepal group eventually had to leave for the airport to make the flight, and we left the other group of 5 at the YWCA to wait for the second van, which showed up an hour later than it was supposed to.
The second adventure was in finding out where our flight was. The people driving the vans told us we would be flying out of the international terminal, since we were flying internationally, but when we got there the guards checking tickets told us we needed to go to the domestic terminal, which was about 6 km away. Since our van had already left, we had to call and be picked up again to be taken to the other airport terminal. Once we got there, one of the four of us had booked a flight leaving the day after the rest of us. That was a whole other adventure we got to sort out.
Eventually, all of us got on our flight to New Dehli. Once there, we navigated the airport (a more impressive feat than it seems) at 1am, found a place to sleep, and took naps until our next flight at 7am. We flew Air India, and on each 2-3 hour trip we were served a meal. That definitely interfered with my sleeping. After our airport naps, we flew to Kathmandu, got a taxi, and went to our hostel. We're staying at a place called Sanu's House; the women who runs the hostel is kind of like a long lost Nepalese aunt who is trying to take care of us and wants to make sure we are safe all the time. She made us lunch, and we sat on mats on her kitchen floor and ate lunch and drank tea. Her niece then took us out on a walking tour of the area we're staying in - Patan - which makes up the southern portion of the city of Kathmandu. Here are some pictures from the day:
After we got back from a little sightseeing, we took another nap, then ate dinner. Dinner was followed by more delicious tea...I could really get used to this. I was also enjoying the weather here - only mid 80's instead of the 100+ degree temperatures with major humidity we were getting around Mumbai.
There will be more exploring of Kathmandu tomorrow, but for now I'm going to prepare my mosquito net for the night.
-Beth
The second adventure was in finding out where our flight was. The people driving the vans told us we would be flying out of the international terminal, since we were flying internationally, but when we got there the guards checking tickets told us we needed to go to the domestic terminal, which was about 6 km away. Since our van had already left, we had to call and be picked up again to be taken to the other airport terminal. Once we got there, one of the four of us had booked a flight leaving the day after the rest of us. That was a whole other adventure we got to sort out.
Eventually, all of us got on our flight to New Dehli. Once there, we navigated the airport (a more impressive feat than it seems) at 1am, found a place to sleep, and took naps until our next flight at 7am. We flew Air India, and on each 2-3 hour trip we were served a meal. That definitely interfered with my sleeping. After our airport naps, we flew to Kathmandu, got a taxi, and went to our hostel. We're staying at a place called Sanu's House; the women who runs the hostel is kind of like a long lost Nepalese aunt who is trying to take care of us and wants to make sure we are safe all the time. She made us lunch, and we sat on mats on her kitchen floor and ate lunch and drank tea. Her niece then took us out on a walking tour of the area we're staying in - Patan - which makes up the southern portion of the city of Kathmandu. Here are some pictures from the day:
After we got back from a little sightseeing, we took another nap, then ate dinner. Dinner was followed by more delicious tea...I could really get used to this. I was also enjoying the weather here - only mid 80's instead of the 100+ degree temperatures with major humidity we were getting around Mumbai.
There will be more exploring of Kathmandu tomorrow, but for now I'm going to prepare my mosquito net for the night.
-Beth
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