Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Checking in from Kathmandu

This is our first check in on the trip. We arrived safely in Kathmandu as scheduled. It has been hard to send a note earlier because there is heavy load shedding here so the light is actually only on for 4-8 hours of the day and we were very tired yesterday and missed the oppertunity to send a note. So far, we are holding up well. Kathmandu is very dusty with hardly a single paved road and lots of pollution from traffic.
Our hotel is clean but very basic and the phone doesn't always work so calling is going to be hard. We will try to turn on our tracking device but I am not sure if it will update our location here.
Our overnight stay in New Delhi was way better than we could have anticipated. The KLM land crew got our passport numbers and luggage tags and passed it to the Jet Airways crew. The three of us walked into a lounge and stayed the whole night there although we were told we could only be there for three hours. Two ours before our flight, a Jet Airways representative brought us our boarding passes and new luggage tags. We had checked in 5 bags and total weight was definitely more than 20 kg but they didn't ask us anything at all. We picked up our bags in Kathmandu and there were no issues at all. So we didn't have to go through customs or immigration in India and didn't have to have my visa stamped. The airlines went our of their way to be accomodating and it was much nicer service than we get during most visits to JFK. Although, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the JFK staff was to us as well.
Will send a longer note later when we have some time. The load shedding is supposed to start any minute now.

nadia

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