Gate1 Travel October 3 – 22, 2023 A bus ride and three flights To Katmandu, Nepal, 6 internal flights plus 3 flights and a bus ride back.
Twelve people in our group. Four friends from Dallas, retired pilot and flight attendants; a couple from California for 30 years and originally from Russia, retired; two guys from Atlanta, neither retired yet, A single guy from Virginia, a woman from Miami — She’s been on 31 Gate1 trips and has been to 88 countries.
Nepal Tour Guide: Anup, grew up in Katmandu.
Bhutan Tour Guide: Sonam, lives in a village a couple hours out of the city of Thimphu.
On every trip I’ve been to since 2017, I’ve given them a rating of a ’10’; and said if I didn’t get sick or robbed, it deserved a ’10’. (Except for the German Pilgrimage which received a ‘3’ due to a horrid tour guide.) Well, this trip is getting an “8”, since I DID get sick — four times. A week after coming home, I am still sick with a cold. I had altitude sickness for 2 days at the beginning — sore muscles walking or climbing anywhere and fatigue. Then I threw up for the first time in 30 years, skipped 5 meals in a row and stayed in bed for 28 hours. Can’t say it was the spicy food, bad food, possibly bad water used in cooking, altitude sickness or just bad luck, but it included a headache for 24 hours. I continued to eat white rice, white potatoes, bananas and bread for several days. Then a week later, I started with a very sore throat that I thought would drag into a 10 day cold ordeal, which went away after a day. And then it was back on, day 3 after getting home. The airports and planes are a melting pot of germs and obviously masks don’t help that much.
I am now trying to get healthy so I can go get my tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis shot and a typhoid vaccine for my trip to India. I assume it’s not smart to get any shots when your immunity is down. — no need to actually GET these diseases from the shot. I know, I know, ‘they’ say you can’t get the disease from the vaccine; but I don’t trust the medical world any more than I trust my banker or car repairman.
I realize this trip was entirely too long, since I’ve forgotten stuff already. I couldn’t figure out why the Doha, Qatar Airport would have our Liberty Bell, made of Legos. DUH I flew from Orlando to Philadelphia and sat at that airport for several hours. I remember paying the down payment for our New Zealand trip in January 2025 on my phone in this airport!!
Once I got to Doha I was thrilled that I had paid $55 to use the Airport Lounge since I had a 9 hour layover. After an exhausting 13 hours in steerage, I went to the Business Class Al Mourjan Lounge, waited in line and was told that even though I had a business Class ticket AND I paid $55, I was not allowed to use the lounge. They pointed me downstairs to the Al MAHA Lounge.
After standing in this line, and the line to the desk, they said they were crowded and they were going to “reward me” with a better lounge, again, downstairs and across the airport. I got snotty and told her I was NOT going to stand in a THIRD line and I just wanted to sleep. She said “Oh sorry!! All the sleepers are taken.” I told her I was going to sleep on a chair. She told me “You’ve got to leave at midnight because you only paid for 6 hours.”
They are just too snooty for me. I would have been better picking a chair at the gate and getting extra sleep. But I must say, they gave me free wine, free food, and I took a shower.
These boarding passes represent the opportunity to actually fly in Business Class once in my lifetime. And if that was going to happen, it was best to do so on Qatar Airlines — the best Business Class in the industry. I upgraded my flight for $199. It was only a 5 hour flight, but after a 13 hour flight in steerage, it was a pleasure to be treated so well for 5 hours.
I had my own cubicle where I could shut the door and be alone. They had a storage door with a mirror and noise-cancelling headphones, a slot where you could put your cellphone and it would get charged automatically, a big fluffy velvet pillow and blanket, a menu with very nice food, a seat to moved every which way, including flat so you could sleep, and a tiny box of delicious chocolates as a departure gift. I slept 2 hours of wonderful sleep.
Tom was on the same flight as I and we were picked up without problems. Traffic is ridiculous. Cars and scooters everywhere without lane lines, yet they don’t seem to crash. This is the first hotel we stayed and we had dinner at the Chimney — called so because it had a huge chimney in the middle of the room.
We had to get up at a God awful hour (4 AM or so) to be able to catch a local flight to see the Himalayas. I thought I’d finally find out how it is properly pronounced — Him-a-lay’-as or Him-all-yas. The joke was on me since they have their own name for it in Nepalese and when our tour guide pronounced it in English, it was NEITHER. We took Buddha Air for all our intra-country flights. We did see Mt. Everest (the locals call if Sagarmatha), but I was hoping to fly low and directly over it to see the trash and dead bodies left by previous climbers. The law is now “take out what you take in; and please take some of the trash out that was left by earlier climbers”. The flight was somewhat underwhelming. But my dad says I’m jaded from too much travel.
We went to see our first stupa. And monkeys and dogs run wild. Cool!!
This is a small stupa, but they all follow the same ‘rules’. The base holds religious relics, etc. There are the all-seeing eyes on all four sides. Above that is 13 levels of enlightenment. And at the top is a decoration for attaining true enlightenment. They say Buddhas are just normal men that have done the work and taken the 13 steps and become enlightened. The prayer flags are everywhere and bestow blessings on all. They stay up until the sun and wind disintegrate them and they are taken down. Just noticed the Philadelphia Liberty Bell was in Katmandu. JUST KIDDING!!
I couldn’t keep track of all the gods and goddesses, like Vishnu, Ganesha (elephant God, remover of obstacles) , Shiva is the lord of destruction. Notice the water is not very clean. We could not drink water or brush our teeth with the tap water.
Another stupa, with the base, the eyes, the 13 levels and a top. And the prayer flags.
There was a terrible earthquake in 2015 that destroyed half of the old temples. Most have been restored. However, some are still not repaired because of the fights between the city and UNESCO. UNESCO wants it to look authentically old and the city wants to make it strong enough to withstand another earthquake. So the rebar, etc., must be hidden inside.
These are prayer wheels. The rules are that the right had must be used (since the left hand is used for wiping your butt), and the wheel must be spun clockwise. They spin pretty well and I was trying to get as many blessings as possible
Note the stairs. NOTHING is on flat land in Nepal nor Bhutan. And it seems we mostly went up, up, up!!
This was a smaller version of the Sleeping Buddha that we saw in Thailand
These shops always amaze me. And so colorful!!
Looks more like a Japanese pagoda. And these were birds everywhere.
This is the unique flag of Nepal. It’s got a moon on the top, a sun on the bottom, it’s red — indicates the brave spirits of the Nepalese people. The two triangles symbolize the Himalaya Mountains and represent the two major religions, Hinduism and Buddhism
This was only Day 2; so more to come!!
Feel free to leave a comment — I’m the only one to see it. Safe Travels!!
Linda Jeanne