Katmandu to Denver

The only real problems for this entire adventure was our return air flight. We left for the airport about 10 AM on Saturday. Air Indigo, our carrier from Katmandu to Delhi, wouldn't check our luggage through to our final destination, only to Delhi and said it would all be worked out in the transfer area of the airport. When we arrived in Delhi, we couldn't leave the transfer area until our bags had been transferred from Air Indigo to Air India. After about half an hour of waiting, members of our group started taking action. One called the regional director of OAT, who then got the Airport hotel manager involved. The Air India folks kept reporting that Air Indigo was ignoring their phone calls to transfer the luggage. Eventually the airport manager was called to help resolve the problem. After about two hours, they started writing down our information - name, passport, continuing air flights, final destination, and took our Delhi baggage claim checks. We ended up waiting 3 1/2 hours in this transfer area (with no water or food) before the baggage was transferred and we could get our boarding passes from Air India. Then Mary and one of our other tour members were randomly picked by TSA to get a special screening of their luggage, which took another hour. Finally about 7 PM, we made it to the airport hotel. Since we hadn't eaten since breakfast, our first concern was food and drink. We finally got to our hotel room at 9 PM before our 2 AM flight. So we managed to rest for about 2 1/2 hours before it was time to get up and find our departure gate. Happily, we were met by our baggage in Denver (and everyone else also got their baggage).

So how do you summarize this trip? It was everything I expected - an introduction to a different culture, interesting architecture, friendly people, and yes, it was an assault on the five senses. As you may be able detect from the length of my blog entries, I took more notes and learned more things than on any other trip we've been on. As others had told us, we did get tired of the food, there are just so many ways you can fix vegetables, chicken, and goat meat, but we were pleasantly surprised several times with some unique dishes, particularly in Nepal. I have to give full credit to our guides, both were quite informative, and Prashant really made an effort to ensure that we had alternative activities during our free (or rest) time, as well as engaging Indian people in conversation so we could better understand the real people. And there were lots of surprises. The biggest negative surprise was how extensive the air pollution was, even in the countryside, we couldn't escape it, and most of us ended up with a hacking cough. There were many positive surprises: the poverty wasn't any worse than other third world countries, the beauty of inlaid marble, the best prices on silk rugs we'd ever seen, our hotel outside of Ranthambhore, our very interesting host at the home-hosted dinner, and Katmandu was a complete surprise, it's contrast to India and the beauty of the mountains and countryside. My recommendation: don't do this trip as your first third world country visit, but also don't miss out on visiting this fascinating country.

If you would rather view a video than read a blog, there is a 30 minute video available on Youtube.