The Roller Coaster to Nepal

I'm writing this from Kathmandu. It's our last night in our Hotel before we head out on our trek. We have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow and then we will be treking through the mountains on the Annapurna circuit for 18 days. However, I couldn't go to bed without doing two things. First thing was to finish up the Trekking Dashboard that I started building somewhere in Croatia. The other is to write at least a small post about what has happened to us over the past 5 days.

I desparately wanted to have time and the headspace to write about Egypt before this as I like to keep things chronological, however, I will journal some notes and write something at a later date as this post takes precedence.

Let's go back a few days, it was our last day in Cairo and the Inn that we were staying at had a power outage for the whole morning. We had planned to use the internet that morning to download our boarding passes for the flights that we were going to be taking, darn. Our flights were unfortunately with two different airlines and when we got to the airport they told us that they were unable to check our bags all the way through and we would have to pick them up in Riyadh (the capital of Saudi Arabia). At the time of booking our flights, it didn't occur to us that our bags wouldn't be checked all the way through. At this point, my spidy senses started to tingle. I recalled reading an article about Canadian / Saudi relations being not great and also information about Saudi Arabia's visa policy being quite strict.

We arrived in Riyadh and started our way toward customs. I was nervous. We didn't have our boarding passes for our connecting flights on our phones so I didn't see the customs experience going well. Even more so, I had been listening to a podcast episode that was talking about George Orwell's 1984 and so I had even more unjustified worries about the safety of my Holly. I had spun an entire distopian future for me and my wife if we attempted to go through customs. All of a sudden an airport agent asked if we had a connecting flight, I immediatly said yes. He told us we needed to go up the stairs and down the hallway for the connecting flights. I showed him our baggage claims explaining that we needed to pick up our bags, but he promptly said that an airport agent would help us sort it out upstairs.

This was the ticket out of my distopian future... so I took it. Holly and I proceeded through some limited security screening and upstairs where... we couldn't find anyone from the airline. We asked the first people we found, they pointed us down the concourse. Down the concourse we went where we fortunately found a very helpful woman who used her phone to get us onto the wifi so I could quickly download our boarding passes to Dubai and Kathmandu. We explained the baggage situation and she grabbed another man to help us, we filled out a strange manifest form and he said that our bags would be transferred to Dubai. I was optimistic... Holly was less so.

And with good reason. We got to Dubai and went to collect our bags. No bags. Not a single bag on the belt. We quickly went to the lost baggage counter where the staff promptly told us that they could not locate our bags in the system. At this point. I'm pretty crushed. I told Holly to trust me as I tried to navigate us around some dark reality that I had created in my head only to lose our bags half way through our 3 flight journey to Nepal. I won't speak for Holly as I can only imagine how she was feeling in those moments. I was sad for letting down my team mate yet again.

We caught our flight to Kathmandu where our guide picked us up. He quickly learned that our bags were missing and he was distressed for us. I can only imagine how stressed we looked. We checked into our hotel with the clothes on our backs and our carry ons. Our guide took us for lunch and then said he would come back later and he would take us to see the monkey temple. I needed to do everything I could to make it up to Holly. I went down to some cyber cafe and sat in a tiny little phone booth spending way to much money talking to airlines about our bags. I sent emails with pictures of our bags and followed up with previous phone calls. Our guide came later in the evening and we walked across town to the monkey temple.

Here we were. Two priveleged Canadians, flown half way around the world to come treking and our bags are gone. Now we're walking across Kathmandu through streets filled with people that have so little and yet there faces exude a sense of happiness that I can only describe as magical. After spinning as many prayer wheels as I could find, we got back to our hotel, feeling exhausted and depressed.

Morale was very low. We both broke down. Here we were, so sad about losing all of our treking gear and that we would have to go out and buy new stuff. In a place where poverty is so evident. We felt sad and at the same time ashamed that our egos were so intertwined with these backpacks full of things. We decided that we would wait until 3 pm the next day to hear from the airline and then we would go buy new treking gear.

This was not the trip we had planned, but it was the trip we had received

The day dragged on. I constantly checked my email for any news. Nothing. We decided to go and buy all of the supplies that were needed even if our bags arrived. 3 pm came and our guide came to the hotel. He told us that it would be no problem if we wanted to wait another day. We decided that since it wouldn't affect the trek... that it wouldn't hurt to wait one more day. 12 more tense hours rolled by. I had a restless sleep and woke up before the alarm. I quickly opened up my phone to check for any emails...

From: FlyDubai Subject: Lost Baggage

I quickly opened it, like a kid on Christmas morning.

Glorious! Holly and I spent the rest of the day picking up a few more things and a little more sightseeing. We picked up our bags from the airport with little issue and I'm now way past my bed time writing this. I just wanted to write this to capture at least some of what happend over the past few days before we go treking. We will likely be MIA for the next 18+ days.

See you on the other side.