9-10 Oct 2019
The flight to Istanbul was uneventful, but long. I managed about four hours of sleep, spending the rest of the time either reading or watching Toy Story 4. We arrived at Istanbul ahead of schedule and, after taxiing for quite some time, made it to the terminal.
The new airport in Istanbul is huge and beautiful, but it has the most ungainly and inefficient wifi system around, allowing only one hour of free access per person. Luckily, in that time, I was able to locate Mike and Grace and we decided to set up a small camp and wait out the next 3.5 hours until our flight to Nepal would board. We couldn’t locate Kevin, but eventually met up with him at the departure gate--which wasn’t announced until about an hour before departure.
We spent most of our time relaxing or walking around the new facility, marveling at the luxury goods retailers and duty free shops, as well as the amazing diversity one sees in a city like Istanbul--especially at its airport. Turkish Airlines claims to fly to more countries that any airline in the world, and that seemed obvious from what we saw.
We bought a couple of snacks, but not too much food. Mike picked up a big Tobelerone chocolate and some drinks. I had to have an authentic Turkish coffee. We also bought a bottle of Laphroaig whiskey just to have something a little stronger during the trip. I bought a new wireless mouse, too, as I quickly discovered something that I’d forgotten on the trip.
Before boarding, we met up with Kevin who seemed to have weathered his first flight quite well. It was good catching up with him and he seemed to be enthusiastic about the trip as well as meeting Grace and Mike. We boarded on time in the usual gaggle fashion, but I was happily surprised to get an unexpected upgrade to seat 1B in business class. That made the next leg of the trip so much more comfortable with my lay-flat seat and great food and drink.
The guy sitting next to me was a 30-is German tea dealer, educated in Scotland, who was visiting Nepal for the first time. Interesting guy with a fascinating accent when he spoke English. The flight departed the gate on time but had to return to the gate for about 10 minutes due to some minor mechanical issue. We left almost an hour late--more extensive taxiiing--and landed about 40 minutes late into Kathmandu.
I didn’t sleep very much on the flight--maybe an hour or so--occupied as I was with watching Gary Oldham in “Darkest Hour,” the great service, and the free wifi that I used to catch up. It was also fascinating to watch live TV coverage on TRT (the Turkish CNN) of the Turkish invasion of Northern Syria and to get their slant on these events.
The approach into Kathmandu at dawn was spectacular with the Himalayas out the left-side windows and the twisting, turning, final track into Tribhuvan International Airport. We departed the plane--what looked like the only flyable aircraft then on any tarmac or runway and walked to a shuttle bus that took us no more than 100 meters to the entry gate to immigration.
I was literally the first person off of the bus and into immigration, finding myself one of their electronic kiosks with which to process my visa--something that took no more than five minutes. From there, I only had to pay my $50 fee, get my passport stamped and then go through a security scan before arriving at baggage claim.
Mike and Grace were just a few minutes behind me but Kevin was one of the last to clear immigration as he had a couple of false-steps due to some poor advice. Nonetheless, we were all glad to claim our bags and head out together to the curb to meet our driver. I’d been conversing with Dinesh, our Creating Possibilities Nepal Team Lead, via WhatsApp so we knew they were ready to pick us up. I was also quite pleased to see that my cell phone (Pixel 3 on the Google Fi network) wrokedin Nepal since the Google Fi webpage reported that Nepal was not one of the 180-plus countries in which service was available. They must’ve just fixed that because I had a clear signal and Google Fi VPN right away. That saved me--so far at least--from buying a new SIM card for my extra phone.
We saw a guy holding a sign with our names at the curb and walked out to him. He directed us to another location and a van came to get us quickly. Our big bags were loaded atop the van in a small cage--not strapped down or covered--and we headed to the Creating Possibilities Nepal (CPN) site to pick up Dinesh.
Dinesh jumped into the van and gave us lots of info right away. We arrived at the Kathmandu Eco Hotel within 20 minutes (in the heart of the Thamel district) and checked in without any issues. Hal Rhoads met us in the lobby and we all relaxed for a few minutes over some coffee and tea.
The next 30 minutes were spent chatting with Dinesh about the trip, hotel, Kathmandu, etc. I told the others my plan to relax for about an hour and get unpacked--as well as shower and plug things in--followed by as much walking around the city as possible before crashing for the night. This has always been my plan when recovering from overnight flights. All agreed, though Kevin said he might do only a half day with us.
Dinesh introduced us to his friend, Bimal (sp?) who worked with the hotel as a guide. He informed us that the Chinese President, Xi, was coming to Kathmandu on Saturday, 12 Ot, and that if we were going to visit anywhere outside of Kathmandu (e.g., Bakhtapur) we needed to do that on Friday since road closures and traffic would be an issue. He offered to get us a driver to pick us up at 9am the next morning and drive us around all day to the outer sites of Kathmandu and we readily accepted. We would hit the loser in sites like the Monkey Temple on the 12th when our need for transpo and crossing the city (or going anywhere near the airport) wouldn’t be an issue. Bimal also warned us that the flights of those coming in on Saturday were likely to be disrupted (Hoot, Sue, Deb), but that there was nothing we could do about that.
The group reassembled in the lobby at 10:30am and we began our walk, maps in hand, through Thamel south to the Kathmandu Durbar Square area. I was immediately struck by how little had changed since my last visit almost five years prior, though as we got closer to the square we seemed to see more damage from the April 2015 earthquake in the form of unrepaired buildings, vacant lots where collapsed buildings had stood, and lots of bracing and scaffolding around unstable buildings or those in some state of repair.
We all successfully navigated use of an ATM, each getting out 10,000 Nepalese Rupees (about $90 US). A few blocks later, a young man seemed to glom onto us, asking about us and showing us around. We couldn’t get rid of him. He said he was just a student who wanted to practice his English and be nice to foreigners, but we knew it was more.
He was a nice guy, but we couldn’t distance ourselves. We finally found a place for lunch and he followed us in. I offered to buy him lunch, but he said he only wanted tea. We ate a light lunch of local food (daal, chicken, mo-mos, etc) in a small hotel restaurant and then went into Durbar Square. By this time, our “guide” was getting pushy and asked if we could each give him 1,000 rupees for his services. I kind of lost it and told him that we never asked for or agreed to his help, that we’d asked him to leave us alone several times, and that he wouldn’t get any money from us. He stomped off in a huff, quite miffed that he’d wasted so much time on us.
We spent about an hour walking around the Durbar Square area, much changed from my previous visit. Almost all of the buildings were closed to access and several were barely more than heaps of bricks, The largest building on the site, a nine-story, 17th Century structure was completely cordoned off with huge signs proclaiming the restoration work underway funded by the Chineses. We each paid 1,000 rupees for entry, but really shouldn’t have bothered as there was open access everywhere. We justified the expenditure to ourselves by saying that we were supporting the restoration of the site, too, but it wasn’t clear that the money was well-spent!
From Durbar, we meandered out way back towards the hotel through the twisting, dirty backstreets of Kathmandu, stopping at about 3pm at the “Garden of Dreams” to relax and get a coffee or drink. This beautiful little spot looks like the perfect wedding shoot location with manicured laws, ponds with lily pads, a classical building, sculptures, and walkways. It’s the nicest kept area in Kathmandu with no trash on the ground. Several hundred were in the park with their families taking photos and enjoying the peace and quiet.
I took several photos of families with their cameras and enjoyed interacting with the locals as usual--and also taking photos with my own camera. There’s a huge swing their supported by 25-foot tall bamboo beams that’s always a treat and people stand in line for five or six swings on the giant pendulum, each smiling for the cameras that are clicking away. I took shot of several including Mike pushing Grace to start her turn.
We walked the last 800 meters back to the hotel and agreed to meet up at 5:45 to walk to the Fusion Himalaya Restaurant about 300 meters away for dinner. Kevin, who left us just after lunch and skillfully made his way back to the hotel solo, sent me a note that he was fine and would join us for dinner.
We joined up a few minutes late--I was late as I had become engrossed in photo post-processing--and started out walk, led by Google Maps. We found the place easily, dodging cars, motor bikes, and huge potholes in equal measure along the way in the falling dusk.
We walked into the restaurant and the owner immediately greeted me by name. I’d been in touch with him asking for a reservation and he’d seen my WhatsApp profile. The other tourists turned and looked at us a little bit surprised. I found his place because it was somehow rated #3 of over 600 restaurants in Kathmandu despite having no more than 30 seats at its narrow, back alley location.
The owner was very helpful, but also explained that he was short-handed that evening and missing one of his cooks so he’d have to run back and forth between us and the kitchen to help the staff. We thanked him, ordered beers and relaxed.
The place was filled with western tourists and every seat seemed taken. The beer was cold and the appetizers were excellent. We ordered currys and chow mein and watched the action. Hal drank two large bottles of cold beer a little too quickly and was having a great time. Grace was starting to crash, as was I. We left the restaurant at 7:45 and all hoped to be in bed by 8:00pm.
I almost made that goal. I had to shift all of my stuff to another room earlier in the afternoon because my air conditioning wasn’t working, so that cost me some set-tup time, but by 8:30 I was sound asleep.