So, after spending an unexpected week in Malaysia, we finally manage to make it rise at the crack of dawn on Thursday 12th March and lug our massive luggage (I like to be prepared for every possible scenario ok...) to Kuala Lumpur International Airport and get a flight out to Kathmandu - yay! The views from the plane of the the Himalayas were incredible, and exactly what we needed to lift our spirits, especially with the extra legroom thanks to being on the exit aisle! The houses we flew over looked like they were made of lego bricks - colourful rectangular towers dotted all over with dirt tracks weaving between them
After circling the airport once or five times because there was a queue of planes waiting to land, we landed smoothly(ish) and felt like we could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Little did we know what was to come! Kathmandu international airport is definitely an experience, as we walked in to luggage piled everywhere, little signage about visas and how to get them and no one with any idea what they were doing! We managed to get through visa and immigration control relatively easily and went on to try and claim our baggage. Luckily we bumped into a couple we had been talking to in Malaysia who has also only just made it out, so we went to the carousel and waited. And waited. And waited. Everything was crazy, there were hundreds of people, only a fraction of whom we recognised from our flight, and carnage ensued as people were picking up luggage that wasn't theirs, eyeing up the 15 or so tvs that were going round. It was as the same bags were going round, the crowd had dwindled a bit and even our friends from Malaysia had got their bags that we started to realise. When we asked at the desk we were told that half of the baggage from the malaysia flight hadn't made it on to the plane, so would be coming out on the next flight later that night. Awesome. Good job we had a friend waiting outside to take us to a hotel and help us out right? Wrong!
So with no bags until 11pm at the earliest we decided to head outside, find Nabin and find somewhere cheap we could stay for the night and have something to eat and a shower and wifi. As soon as we walked outside we were bombarded by persistent taxi drivers, hounded by people selling phones and greeted by a massive wall of people, none of them Nabin! At this point we were totally stuck - in a crazy foreign country where we didn't speak the language, no bags, no money, no friendly familiar face there to help us, no accommodation booked for the night or anything, or even wifi or mobile signal to get help. Luckily I remembered the name of the hotel I had booked to stay at the week before and we headed for there. We ended up staying in the slightly more expensive airport hotel but by then we were just desperate for somewhere to stay and get some shut eye.
11pm came along and at 11.30 it was announced that there was a problem with the runway so the plane that was (hopefully) carrying our bags had to be diverted to Doha as Kathmandu airport was closed once again!
Anyway, luckily when we went back in the morning our bags were there, and after a quick call to the awesome GVI staff we had a car booked to drive us to Pokhara at 10am, finally!! Despite spending most of Friday 13th in a car on one of the most dangerous roads in the world (sorry Mum!) we made it to Pokhara just in time to join move into our room and join the team for a social night - and breathe a massive sigh of relief!