- Barbara Kingsolver
SO GLAD to finally be in Nepal! With the exception of my return flight on the 28th, if I never step foot in an airplane or airport again, it will be too soon. At just over 32 hours straight, that was the most grueling travel I've experienced since my military days. But here I am with three full days to decompress, acclimatize, and adjust to the time zone before I ride.
Kathmandu is ten hours and 45 minutes ahead of central time in the States. For reasons I can't fathom, time zones over here are sliced into 15-minute increments. So if it's noon in Texas, it's 10:45pm in Kathmandu. Anyone attempting to reach out to me while I'm over here should remember that, as timely responses might be sketchy. Even more strange, when I cross the Friendship Bridge into Tibet, I will be on CST (China Standard Time), which is 13 hours ahead of central time in Texas. Confused yet? Try it from my end. My route to Everest Base Camp will weave in and out of various time zones and I'm told it's best to just ignore the GPS time, focus on the terrain at hand, and find a clock when I stop for the night. Sounds like a plan. After all, I'm really not on a firm schedule over here.
My day after a half-day at my job has been as follows:
- 2 hour drive to DFW Airport
- 2 hour wait at DFW Airport
- 9.5 hour overnight flight to Paris
- 5 hour layover at De Gaulle Airport
- 10.5 hour overnight flight from Paris to Colombo Sri Lanka
- 3 hour layover in Colombo
- 4 hour flight from Colombo to Kathmandu
I arrived at Tribhuvan International
Airport (KTM) in Kathmandu around noon and secured my Nepalese visa at the
KTM immigration office. Nepal has a
local tourist visa process that can be completed at the airport upon arrival.
I processed my multi-entry visa online before I left Texas and only had
to show my printed copy and pay $50USD to the Customs official. The whole process took about five minutes. Not bad for a country that was reportedly completely closed to most tourism until 1985.
I couldn't help but notice that there
were several observation stations where local officials were
actively scanning the new arrivals looking for passengers
who might be demonstrating symptoms of illness. Despite the fact that I felt like a zombie, I must have appeared
sufficiently healthy because they didn't give me a second glance. This
is high tourism season in Kathmandu and I can't help but wonder if these
"officials" were really official, or just window dressing like the TSA is in the States.
Perhaps a bit of both.
Baggage claim is interesting over here. I had to exit the secure arrival gate area and then re-enter a different secure area that outbound passengers use to board their aircraft. But instead of heading to the gate, I had to find the bag carousel assigned to my flight and wait for my bags. I assume that they somehow manage to separate the inbound passengers from the outbound, but I didn't feel like testing the system.
After retrieving my luggage from the carousel
and clearing customs, with no inspection, My host Kumar spotted me from fifty feet away and ran me down. I guess I stand out here. I followed him to an awaiting car and settled in for what would surely be a relaxing ride to my hotel, during which I could take in the historic architecture and vivid colors of Kathmandu.
Within minutes, I found myself attempting to discretely claw through the back seat and into the trunk where my riding gear bag was stashed so I could strap on my motorcycle helmet. Traffic in Kathmandu is like living in a virtual reality video game created by meth heads. The signs, signals, and road markings are all mere suggestions to be ignored by drivers who go where they want when they want, and they do so with seemingly no regard to the vehicles, pedestrians, and livestock (yes, livestock) in the streets and on the sidewalks around them.
Horns seemed to simultaneously blast from vehicles in every direction. I noticed that drivers in Kathmandu don't necessarily blow their horns in anger like NYC cabbies. The short bursts of beeps appear to be a language of sorts and
once I familiarized myself with it, I was able to anticipate my driver's and the other drivers' actions and relax the my sphincter pucker just a bit. Remembering this language will make navigating the roads and negotiating
with other drivers was much easier when I'm on the bike and on my way out of Kathmandu and on my to the Tibetan border.
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After a harrowing twenty minute ride during which all 62 years of my life flashed before my eyes, we arrived at the
surprisingly modern Hotel Manaslu and whereupon I unglued myself from the passenger seat and crawled out of the van. I think I know how the passengers on that Canadian Delta flight 4819 to Toronto felt at the end of their trip. Any notion of taking a short nap was flushed away. I was wired and tweaking, and I needed to catch my breath.
Check-in was a snap. Kumar handled everything. The desk clerk handed me a key; yes a real metal key and my bags were waiting for me when I got to my room. I'm impressed! I'm still a bit wired, so I'll go explore a bit before bed if the drizzly rain stops.
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| Hotel Manislu Courtyard |
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| Courtyard View from my Room |
I
handed my passport over to the local fixer to process my Chinese visa today to get a jump on the process. I can’t say I’m entirely comfortable
surrendering my passport to a total stranger while in a foreign country,
but his reputation precedes him and I’m told this is how
it’s done here. If I attempt to do it myself, I could be held up
with
red tape (no pun intended) for a week. An hour or so after my passport rode off with the fixer, he returned to the hotel to take fresh photos of me for my visa. He said the photo in my official passport was rejected because my white hair blended in with the white background. While I found that peculiar, it gave me an increase sense confidence in this guy's visa contacts and the legitimacy of the process, irrespective of how odd it seems.
I met a rider who is here from Zurich
who says he will not
hand over his passport and will opt to remain in Nepal if he must. Maybe I'll
see him on the road out there. There is
plenty to see in Nepal and there is a Nepalese base camp on Everest's
south side. But motorized vehicles are prohibited on the Nepal side of
Everest, so if we want to see Everest by motorcycle, our route is north
through Tibet. I've trained too hard, over analyzed for too long, and
dreamed for too
many years to get myself this close to Everest and not realize my goal.
I'm dead tired and hoping to get my mind and body synced to local time by tomorrow, but I haven't converted my mind over
to metric time. Maybe I should download a metric time app on
my smart watch.😏 Nevertheless, the excitement I feel for the days to
come is matched only by the sheer exhaustion I also feel from the days
just passed.
Finally,
a hotel bed. Actually two. I'm fighting the urge to dive in, but I
don't want to wake up at 2:00am and stare at the ceiling all night.
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| My Room |
I find it ironic that my body moved at the 550mph speed of a 777 Superliner, and yet my mind seems to have moved at the speed of a yak. Even
after having flown millions of miles during my work career, I still
wake up in the morning disoriented and unsure of where I am after a
first night of travel. It seems impossible that I was so exhausted that I could sleep standing up, but
then was wide awake when I finally got to my hotel room and tried to
sleep. This is common on
my regular stateside trips for work, so one can imagine my mental state
after traveling for 32 hours straight and waking up to the sights,
sounds, and smells of the third world. I attempted unsuccessfully to regulate my sleep with Xanax during
my Atlantic crossing, and between Paris and Sri Lanka so that I could sleep when I finally hit the sheets here in
Kathmandu, but now my circadian rhythms are about as regular as a punk rock drummer on Quaaludes. I swear Macbeth and Banquo slept better than I will tonight night.