Adventures in Nepal: Days 1 and 2 (October 25-26)

My trip to Nepal started Tuesday morning with a flight out of Lamezia Terme around 9:00 am.  I was worried that my trip was off to a bad start when 10 minutes before walking out the door to go to the airport (about 6:50am) I put on my backpack and one of the strap connections just broke right off.  The plastic connection appeared to have melted at some point, and the weight of the pack caused the connection to just crack in half.  I had a minor panic attack, but Tyler came to the rescue and rigged up a temporary connection using one of the plastic fittings from his pack, some nylon cord, and a safety pin.  I still have to make a stronger connection before I start hiking, but it at least got me through my travel to Kathmandu.

I flew from Lamezia to Milan, where upon my arrival I met up with a technician from a company in Milan who needed to deliver some spare parts that we had ordered for our instrument.  He was very kind and even drove me over to the other terminal in the rain so that I could meet my colleagues and catch my next flight.  Soon after arriving there, I met up with the technicians from Rome (Giulio and Stefano) who are here to help me set up our mercury analyzer. We had plenty of time to kill before our flight out of Milan so we had a chance to visit and even track down three other guys (Carlo, Roberto, andPaolo) who were traveling to Kathmandu on the same flights as us and will also do the trek with us. We all went through check-in together and have pretty much been together ever since.

We flew from Milan to Doha, Qatar.  That flight was about 5 or 6 hours.  The time passed reasonably quickly with the help of a few episodes of Six Feet Under and a decent meal served by Qatar Airways.  In Doha we had to wait for about 2 hours to catch our next flight to Kathmandu, which left at 1:20am.  The flight from Doha to Kathmandu was shorter – maybe 4 hours. That one was a little tougher because I really just wanted to sleep at that point, but I never do that very well on the airplane and Qatar Airways seems to think that serving a meal at 2am (basically second dinner for us) is completely normal.  Essentially the cabin lights were never dimmed so it was hard to get much sleep.  We arrived in Kathmandu around 8:45 am local time.  I learned that Kathmandu is 3 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Italy.  I still need to figure out why they have chosen not to extend that time difference by 15 minutes. We had to wait quite a while for our bags after getting our Nepalese Visas, but eventually we got them and everything was still in tact – no damage or lost articles.  I consider that a success anytime I check a bag. 

When we exited the airport we walked right into the smog and chaos of Kathmandu. Fortunately we had two drivers waiting to take us to our hotel so we could ignore the crowds of other taxi drivers offering their services to us. Our drivers greeted us with a sort of Nepalese-style lei for each of us – bright orange carnations strung together with the occasional purple or white flower mixed in. It was then that we learned that it is festival here in Nepal for about 4 days (today being day 2).  Someone told me this is pretty much like Christmas for the Nepalese in terms of its importance of a holiday for everyone.  There are bright orange flowers hanging in almost every door and window and there are people everywhere!  The drive to our hotel was interesting needless to say – there were people everywhere on foot, in cars, and on mopeds.  I thought Cosenza traffic was bad, but it has nothing on Kathmandu.

We arrived at a very nice hotel where we met up with another two Nepalese men who have helped coordinate our expedition.  We had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and they filled us in on the plans for the next couple days.  Basically we have today and tomorrow to hang out in Kathmandu.  Then very early Friday morning we will take a short flight from Kathmandu to Lukla and begin our trek.  However, it was during our meeting with these guys that I learned that our instrument has not, in fact, arrived in Kathmandu.  This is not news I wanted to hear, although I’m not really surprised.  Because it is festival for the next few days, the customs office is closed so even once our cargo arrives, it cannot clear customs until at least Sunday. But we start hiking Friday.  I was worried for a while, but about an hour ago I spoke to my boss Francesca and she had already spoken with our contact in Bergamo who organized the shipment.  I guess our box should arrive today or tomorrow and it will have to sit at the customs office until Sunday the 30^th.  After that, the porters will bring it up faster than normal so that it will arrive around the same time we do at the station.  This is the plan.  If it goes as I have described I think it will be a miracle, so please keep your fingers crossed for us!! Otherwise we’ll just be kickin’ it at 5,000 meters.

Anyway, after we got settled in our hotel rooms we set out for a walk around town to see the local shopping area, exchange our Euros and Dollars for Rupee, and find some lunch. The streets were swarming with people and it was a little overwhelming.  Kathmandu is fairly run down, but it has its charms.  It’s kind of like a more extreme version of Naples, if you can imagine that.  The little shops are full of pashminas, jewelry, hiking gear, and interesting local artwork.  It’s just a little hard to enjoy it between the mopedszooming past every second and the street vendors constantly walking up to you trying to get you to buy their stuff. Once we took care of the money exchange we went to a really great restaurant for lunch.  I had a typical local dish called dal-bat, which is a plate of white rice with little dishes of different sauces and vegetables to put on top of it.  It was fantastic. That dish, a beer, and a coffee cost me only 9 Euros, too.  Awesome. 

After lunch we got a taxi and headed over to a neighboring town called Patan where there are more interesting shops and some historic buildings and temples.  Getting a taxi was really interesting and I’m not sure how to describe it.  It involved a lot of big vans lined upon the side of the road and a lot of yelling Nepalese men.  It got us where we needed to go.  We did have an extra passenger in our taxi, though, and I could tell right away he was American.  It turns out he was born in Seattle and now lives in Grand Rapids.  If you could see the scene in Kathmandu, you would be thinking what I was thinking… What are the chances he and I would end up in the same taxi together?  He runs and NGO here and spends about 3 months a year in Nepal. We chatted for a while during our ride, which helped me ignore the insane traffic.  Our walk around Patan was really nice but we were all getting tired at that point, given our sleepless night, so we eventually came back to the hotel to relax for a while.  A hot shower has not felt that good in a while.  We may go out a little later for some dinner, but really I just want to sleep!  Tomorrow we will likely do some more walking around and then get ready for our trek.  We have to be ready to go at 5am Friday morning.

So that’s the story so far.  Overall things are going well (minus the missing instrument…).  I am happy that the guys I am with are friendly and nice.  I was worried about being the only woman but so far that has not mattered at all.  I am getting to know Giulio and Stefano better all the time and I think they will be great to work with. 

I’ll try to write every couple days to fill you in on my goings on.  Check back for more updates on my adventures in Nepal!