The Mrs. and the Mustache: Nepal (Part 1)

Finally I am getting around to writing about our Nepal trip. I have had a hard time getting back into the swing of things since we've been home. I almost forgot about this little corner of the internet.... We have also been waiting until we were able to start sharing our pictures and stories with friends and family in person. But now that we have been able to do that, I can start sharing them with everyone else!

This was my first time going out of the country. I didn't really know what to expect, but my expectations weren't high. I knew it would be long and hard. I knew I would be tired and irritable.

We left Friday night to head down to Atlanta to drop our dog and Finley off with our parents.

We then flew out of Atlanta early Saturday morning (like 5 am early... which means you have to be at the airport at like 3 am.)

The flight from Atlanta to Chicago was easy and non-eventful.

We arrived in Chicago around 7 am. We booked it from the domestic terminal over to the international terminal. We thought we already had our boarding passes to get to our next flight. We knew we would have a 6 hour layover and wanted to get to our gate before we got something to eat. But we were stopped at the security check point and we were told we were to early and needed to go get new boarding passes from the check-in desk for our airline (Air India). We went over to the desk and nobody was there. We went back to the security guard and she said they didn't open until 9:30 (it was 7:30). Awesome. 2 hours of waiting around and the only place to buy food is a kiosk that charged $8 for 1 muffin and 1 apple juice. (BURN!)

So for 2 hours we sat and tried to nap and people watch. Out of the 20+ airlines that had check-in desks in the international terminal Air India was the only one with a security guard. He set up the lines and then blocked them until it was time to open. He also directed everyone which line to go to and which desk to go to and when. There seemed to be no real order to who he was sending where, but we went with it. We started casual conversation with the American in line in front of us. Turned out he was part of our team. We made it through the line just as the rest of our team showed up. We moved somewhat quickly through security and on to the international terminal. By the time we got to our gate we only had 2.5 hours left of our 6 hour layover.

I was somewhat excited about the long flight. I knew it would be long, but Matthew had talked it up. So most of my expectations were set high for that flight. He had said the seats were comfy, the food was decent, and they would have like 500 movie options.

We got on the plane and plopped down in our seats and my expectations quickly went down. The seats were basically plywood covered in fabric. There was little to no cushion in the seat bottom and I could feel every bit of spring and tray table in the seat back. Sweet. One guy actually had a metal plate exposed on his seat!! (What!?) OK, seats weren't what I was expecting, but there should be some good movies right? Wrong. There were like 7 English movies and non of them something I would want to watch. So I picked the best option: 500 Days of Summer - I love Zoey D., but that movie was sloooooooooooow. We waited for the first round of food which was decent, then took some Ambien and went to sleep. I remember waking up at one point as the flight attendant came by and I asked in my ambien state of mind how much longer we had. She looked at me like I was crazy and said "About 9 hours...." It was a 14 hour flight. So I "laid" back down and tried to sleep some more. I woke up a few hours later somewhere over Russia. Matthew slept for a few more hours after I awoke. Finally I was over Matthew sleeping and woke him up. We landed in India a few hours later (around 1 in the afternoon on Sunday there).

This was going to be the hard layover, we had 17 hours in the India airport. Luckily the trip leader had booked us all hotel rooms. Which were SUPER nice! Probably the nicest hotel we have ever stayed in.

Part of the team waiting in the hotel lobby for the rest of the team to arrive for instructions.

The international terminal was really nice. They had a McDonald's, which is where we ate dinner that night. They also had a really good coffee shop that we spent a lot of time at.

Most expensive coffee ever! Just kidding... that is in Rupees so it was about $8.50 for 2 cups of coffee and a piece of cake. That is about average....

That night we were in bed asleep by about 8 PM India time and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open that long. I woke up at about 2 AM, and we were downstairs at the coffee shop by 3. We didn't have to be up until 5 and our flight didn't leave until 7. So we hung out with the rest of the team until it was time to go to our gate.

Most of the team just hanging out at 4:00 in the morning.

Once everyone arrived downstairs and had breakfast we headed over to our gate. It wasn't until we got in line to board the plane that Matthew noticed that we had first class seats for our flight from India to Nepal. BOOM! It was a short flight, only about 2 hours, but it was awesome! This is were I got my first taste of Indian music videos. My love for the continued to grow over the next few weeks while we were in Nepal.

As we started to fly over Nepal we were able to look out our window and see this....

Those would be the Himalayas. Seeing them for the first time, even from the plane brought tears to my eyes. If you had told me as a kid in school learning about the Himalayas that I would see them one day with my own eyes I would have told you you were crazy.

Finally we were in Kathmandu.

We stood in the Visa/Customs line for about an hour. Most of our bags had already arrived by the time we got to baggage claim. We did have to wait for 1 bag that took another hour to arrive. It was about 100 degrees in that room and there was no fresh air circulating. I was on the verge of a panic attack. I think the travel and exhaustion had finally just caught up to me and I was done with being in airports.