Had to get up early to catch my flight to Kathmandu. Not that the plane was leaving all that early, but the logistics of getting to the gate always require numerous hours of necessity. At the last moment I realized that I was probably a bit short on Thai Baht for a taxi from my hotel, so I decided to hoof it towards the nearest Skytrain to see if I could navigate to the airport via public transportation. Even though a bit of hiking with all my luggage plus 3 train transfers were required, it worked out pretty smoothly in the end.
The pack I’m using has been lying dormant since my last big trip, but I really appreciate having it with all its versatility and flexibility. It is canvas, which is a bit on the heavy side for hiking, but durable enough for baggage handlers. It has shoulder straps that tuck away behind a zipper flap so they don’t get caught in airport luggage machinery, but when you need to pull them out and use them, like for hiking distances and jockeying between trains, they sure are nice to have.
Just a short flight to Kathmandu from Bangkok. Relatively speaking, anyway: 4 hours. The plane was deserted. A 777 with 9 seats across and only one other person in my row! Not exactly peak season for visiting Nepal. The flight in was quite spectacular because it comes up over flat India where you notice the hills starting to climb as you cross into Nepal. Soon enough you are flying just above some pretty spectacular mountains as the plane started to descend. Of course you think “Where are they going to land this thing with this terrain?” but then the hills level off as you get into the valley of Kathmandu and the big flat runway can be seen on the plain.
Since Kathmandu is down in a valley it is not really as cold as you would expect in February. But at 1500 meters it certainly is a lot cooler that what I’ve been traveling through over the past 2.5 months. No more hot sweaty tropics for a while, which is a bit of a relief. Kathmandu appears to be a very crazy place with Sri Lankan – style traffic chaos but with even worse roads. Some of the city streets appear to just be mud. I would hate to see what they’re like in the monsoon season.
I had arranged for my hotel to have a driver meet me at the airport. He took me to this groovy little section of town with skinny little alleys running everywhere that were full of crafts shops and backpacker guest houses. I’m one of very few guests in my hotel at the moment. Peak season is in October, November, and December, but this is supposed to be the second best time to be here.
A few facts of life in Kathmandu have already made appearances here. There are rolling blackouts every day of the week. About 8 hours on and 8 hours off. The streets go dark but most of the hotels and shops run on generated or stored solar power, so things go on business as usual. Also, there are frequent strikes here in which you are advised not to leave your hotel. My guest house manager told me there was one planned for tomorrow, but I have not been able to have this confirmed online so I’ll have to play it by ear, I guess.
