Farewell to Kathmandu

Having neglected most other parenting duties over the last few days, I figure that today would be a good day to continue Zac’s ongoing masterclass in how to navigate airports.

The internet seems to think our flight is two hours late, but I figure it’s a good idea to get to the airport on time anyway, since, ever since Lukla, everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

And then some.

Further, if I’m going to have excruciating conversations with Gurkhas in front of an unimpressed twelve-year-old, or, rather, extricate myself from said twelve-year-old to go through aforementioned yes-I’d-rather-have-the-needles-under-my-fingernails-please discussions, I might as well do this while I’m not under time pressure to boot.

It emerges, as with a previous attempt at Atatürk, that Kathmandu airport isn’t an ideal starter airport, what with the electronic departure boards insisting we enter by one of three specific entrances.

Bickering savagely, we discover that “our” entrance (B) is being hosed down with dubious chemicals, although the door is open, C entrance is locked down, and therefore we should just join the queue for the main entrance, A.

Zac, after a few wheelies with our baggage trolley, and one unfair bollocking from an overweight American in camouflage gear which leaves him feeling aggrieved and me feeling stabby, successfully finds the correct checkin desk, navigates security, and gets us through to our “gate”, which is one of a few doors off a particularly depressing tiled area with bus station metal benches and some dismal cafes.

My share of our load, I note as we weigh in, has risen from a perfectly reasonable 18kg (40lb) to a bracing 35kg (80lb).

Right, I figure, pushing doom-laden thoughts of disease to the back of my mind and trying not to panic about being thrown out of China. Time to get on with some work.

We have a hellish 11-hour overnight layover in Kunming before our flight to Bejing, and the boy’s fixated on sleeping at the airport.

For all I know Mr Darcy is still in a giant sulk about my insults to Nepali womanhood. All in all, our respective travelling companions have the potential to make an intrinsically awkward conversation quite epically uncomfortable, even by my rarefied standards.

Now, it would not be entirely accurate to say I am avoiding the Gurkhas.

I have every faith in the White Knight’s ability to make any discussions perfectly civilised and even pleasant and, further, I have applied makeup so that in the event of having to have these discussions I can do so with my head held high highish — well, at least not looking like I’m 80.

I just don’t particularly want to be fielding Zac’s laser eyes while doing so, and I figure Mr Darcy may still be in a giant sulk about my insults to Nepali womanhood, not to mention whatever ear-burningly awful conversation the pair may or may not have had this morning.

All in all, our respective travelling companions have the potential to make an already awkward conversation really quite epically uncomfortable, even by my rarefied standards.

Frankly, after a day that started with a diagnosis of a Vile Lower Half Disease, proceeded to the most embarrassing phone conversation of my life and shows every sign of going steadily downhill, I want nothing more than to curl up into the foetal position and go to bed until everything’s gone away.

But I can’t, because we need to fly three hours to Kunming, spend the night there, then fly another three and a half hours of Beijing, where we finally, finally meet our friends.

Immature of me, I know, but, all in all, if I had an invisibility cloak, I’d wear it. As it is, I just try to keep my eyes from swivelling.

“Are you going to the restaurant?” asks the man outside the Thai Airways lounge, endeavouring to steer us away from his clearly insanely upscale space which, for all I know, has actual gold taps and, ya know, wifi.

For the avoidance of doubt, Kathmandu airport is not a large airport. A 1980s estate agent might perhaps have described it as bijou, though even the most florid of pre-internet estate agents would have struggled to make Tribhuvan International Airport sound appealing.

The dirty tiled area seems remarkably small for the number of “departure gates” and, further there are very few tables, no wifi and no plug points.

OOH! A sign to an “airport restaurant”.

Upstairs! Past the airport lounges. Away from the gates!

“Are you going to the restaurant?” asks the man outside the Thai Airways lounge, endeavouring to steer us away from his clearly insanely upscale space which, for all I know, has actual gold taps and, ya know, wifi.

“Yursss,” I say, in my finest British accent.

And… It’s kinda nice. There’s no one in there, what with the less-than-welcoming attitude at the bottom of the stairs, but I guess this is a state-owned enterprise, so in Maoist Nepal it’s more important to keep the riff-raff out and the staff employed than actually make any money, so who cares?

Anywise, it’s open, with big windows, plug points, highbacked chairs and oodles of entirely empty tables, including one with an excellent view of the door that’s discreetly positioned but not in the least bit hidden. Because hiding would be childish.

And, best of all, there’s an electronic departure board on the wall. We eat some indifferent food, plug in, discover the ludicrously expensive internet is broken, and settle down to maths The Simpsons (Zac), and work miserable navel-gazing (me).

I figure that if the White Knight actually wants to talk to me he can call me. But our chances of inadvertently running into each other, let alone doing so with travelling companions in tow, are close to zero here.

He is Nepali, after all, so his countrymen who guard the entrance will doubtless bring out torches and pitchforks lest his skintone lower the cachet of the place.

I’m so riven with misery, self-hatred and guilt that the only thing I can cope with is tidying my desktop and cleaning up my hard drive with the odd bit of trying to get Skype Wifi to work. There! Productive AND organised! Go me!

After my recent experiences of Nepalese aviation, AKA four hours waiting at this airport for a 25-minute flight to Lukla, and then over four days waiting in Lukla for the 25-minute flight back, I’m inclined to believe the various internet sources that claim our flight is late over the departure board that insists we are on time.

However, I’m not so stupid as to put 100% faith in either Nepalese electronics or the internet, particularly on a day that’s shaping up like this one, and it is a Chinese airline, after all.

They seem to be calling the flights one by one over the tannoy, which is good, so at least the tannoy’s working.

And we have checked bags, so they shouldn’t leave without us.

A day like today, however, particularly after the last fortnight and heading into the year 13, really requires at minimum a triple failsafe, so I ask the guy at the bar whether our flight is delayed or not.

“Wait a minute,” he says, and walks down to the end of the restaurant, and checks the board.

“OH!” I say. “So the departure board is working?”

“Yes, yes,” he says.

Jolly good. I now have a triple failsafe: the departure board, the tannoy, and the man behind the bar in the restaurant. Just to add another layer of security, I send Zac down – yeah, OK, I AM avoiding the Gurkhas – to check whether the flight’s on time. Apparently it is.

I tuck into a coffee and try and do some work, which, when it comes to writing, is not impeded by the absence of internet but rather the reverse, although I’m so riven with misery, self-hatred and guilt that the only thing I can cope with is tidying my desktop and cleaning up my hard drive with the odd bit of trying to get Skype Wifi to work.

There! Productive AND organised! Go me!

Their flight has been called. Ours hasn’t. Yay! OUR flight is DELAYED! No awkward conversations at the departure gate! For OUR flight has not been called in either Chinese or English.

Time ticks on. The White Knight doesn’t call.

I assume that everything that needs to be said has been said over that excruciating phone call, and, since he’s one of the most genuinely interesting people I’ve met in the last three years in addition to possessing that rare and valuable quality of niceness, I would now like one or the other of us to get the fuck out of the country now so that I can get on with the rest of my life, most immediately China.

Ideally me. Provided I don’t have to bump into him and Mr Darcy first.

Oh good! The KL flight has been called.

Ours hasn’t. Yay!

OUR flight is DELAYED! No awkward conversations at security or the gate!

For OUR flight has not been called in either Chinese or English. In fact, the tannoy has been mysteriously silent.

After the marvels of Everest Base Camp, the hell of Lukla and a week of third world bureaucracy, I just want to be somewhere easy. And it doesn’t get much easier than northern China in midwinter!

I start thinking about China. The closer it comes, the harder everything seems.

Pull yourself together, woman, I internally monologue. Last time, we got the visa in one day and found a flat the same day we arrived.

Sure, this time we’re headed north, which is harder, the visa gods have not exactly smiled on us, and getting a child into Chinese school is a different level of difficulty from apartment hunting, and as for getting my disease fixed…. Oh dear god…

But China will be fine, I monologue.

A bit of fun in Beijing, flip the visas, and we’ll be settled and stable in the north, location TBC, with Zac in a Chinese school. Easy as. And, sure -30 is cold, and -40 even colder, but, ya know, we coped OK with the Cho-La.

And we really need to get settled, since, after New Year, all the work I delayed before Christmas is now permanently, irredeemably due, and, further, I’m looking at a cash hole if I don’t get some jobs billed sharpish.

And, to be honest, after the marvels of Everest Base Camp, the hell of Lukla, a week of third world bureaucracy and now a Horrid Unmentionable Disease, I just want to be somewhere easy.

And it doesn’t get much easier than northern China in midwinter!

Zac invites me to watch some Simpsons. I snarl at him.

“So do I need to go down?” I ask. “The plane has landed,” he says again. So?! I think. So?! Planes landing mean nothing in Nepal. Nothing! I return to my screen and stare at it blankly.

Time ticks on and, as the moment of our departure approaches, I get a bad feeling about the board, which is not even showing “Go to gate” yet.

“Is our flight on time?” I ask the guy at the bar, again.

He looks out of the window. “The plane has landed,” he says.

“So do I need to go down?” I ask.

“The plane has landed,” he says again.

So?! I think. So?!

Planes landing mean nothing in Nepal. Nothing!

I return to my screen and stare at it blankly, bemoaning the woeful state of affairs since this morning.

And then I think, no, I should check this.

“Zac,” I say, for it appears the Gurkhas’ flight has STILL yet to leave, and, yes, I know I should be an adult about this, but I’m crippled with embarrassment and unwilling to leave the womblike comfort of this blissfully controlled space until I actually have to. “Can you go down and take a look and actually ask someone at the desk about our flight status?”

Within seconds of Zac’s arrival, the phone rings at the bar. From the stares and the glares from my failsafe behind the bar, I deduce it’s about us, and that someone’s not happy. Great. I pack up rapidly.

“Then I SUGGEST,” I hiss, “That you REPLACE the electronic departure board system in the airport with a series of SIGNS reading, ‘Look at the runway to see whether your plane has arrived yet.’”

The airport official is small, officious and enraged. It appears the airport restaurant is a well-kept secret even among the airport staff. “Why are you not on the plane?” he says.

I point, almost speechless, at the departure board, still showing our check-in desk.

“Because the departure board says the flight is not boarding,” I say, loading Zac up and pacing rapidly through this tiny, tiny airport. “And there was no announcement for the flight,” I add. “Not in Chinese. Not in English. Nothing.”

“You are supposed to be on the plane!” he hectors.

“But the flight was not called,” I say.

He does not dispute this. “You are supposed to be on the plane!” he says accusingly, adding, as if a plane departing late were somehow an unheard-of novelty in Kathmandu, “The plane is leaving LATE because of you.”

What with the Chinese Embassy and Nepali Immigration I have had it up to here with officialdom by now and, while I’m trying to be nice, I’m finding it extremely difficult.

“There is a departure board RIGHT THERE,” I add, as we pass a departure board, which upgrades itself to ‘Go to security’ before our eyes, “And even now it does not say the flight is boarding.”

“But you have a departure time on your ticket!” he says.

I sigh. After over four days stuck in Lukla, I’m not exactly going to take a Nepalese departure time as gospel.

“If the plane does not leave now, it cannot go!” he continues. “It has been on the runway! You can see it on the runway!”

At this, I almost lose my temper. It has been, by most people’s standards, quite a spectacularly bad day already and there’s an overnight in or around Kunming airport to look forward to after this, then ten days of black urine, diarrhoea and dizziness, and, quite possibly, alcohol-induced face explosion to look forward to after that as I reap the wages of sin.

“Then I SUGGEST,” I hiss, unleashing my most regal Queen’s English and clipping my consonants savagely, “That you REPLACE the electronic departure board system in the airport with a series of SIGNS reading, ‘Look at the runway to see whether your plane has arrived yet.’”

“No husband?” she asks, with an expression of deepest sympathy for this moron who very nearly missed a flight when ANYONE could see the plane is on the runway, and quite clearly needs a man to watch the runway for her.

We are at security. Despite having been, apparently, ready to take off for China with our bags on board without so much as a tannoy announcement to find out whether we were coming with them, the airport still requires that we clear security in case, I assume, we’re actually suicide bombers rather than, ya know, bag-smuggling, restaurant-hiding bombers.

The bags go through.

Zac goes through.

The girl who’s doing security looks at me pityingly as I go through.

“No husband?” she asks, with an expression of deepest sympathy for this moron who very nearly missed a flight when ANYONE could see the plane is on the runway, and quite clearly needs a man to watch the runway for her.

I take a deep breath and channel calm. “No,” I say. “No husband.”

Ah China, China! I think, as we hustle to our plane, the annoying man now wisely silent.

China!

A babble of Chinese voices embraces me, the stewardesses tell us in Chinese to dump our bags on the chair and don’t worry about the seatbelts because we’re go-go-go, and a safety announcement starts contemporaneously with the plane beginning to taxi, AKA rather before we’ve actually sat down.

China, here we come!