nepal

Friday

Day off from work and CE and no cultural tour, because sadly I must go to Nepal. Many people were/are impressed that I get to support other continental endeavors, “Ahhh, lucky, I want to go to there!!!”, “How is it”, “Which do you like the best” and other such questions that let me know Im not sucking at life. We left Portugal to London, which means I got a Portugal stamp, awesome, didn’t get one on the way in because we flew into Spain. The bag that I travel with is a large duffel and I keep every sticker and ID tag that I can. When the girl at the airport looked at me she asked if I was George Clooney. Then she looked through my passport and all its stamps and said Oh yes you are George Clooney. She was rather concerned that we did not have a visa for India. As we were not going to India, I didn’t have one. I was only transiting though there. She said hmmmm let me check them all the way through to Kathmandu else you wont be able to leave the secure area in Delhi, you cannot buy a Indian visa at Customs. Okay fine, much obliged. So landed in London, sat in the lounge in for about 4 hours and then hopped onto a British Airways flight for 8 hours to New Delhi, I think its called just Delhi now. My headphones didn’t work on the flight over, but luckily this time, since we were on a non shitty US based airline I had a screen at my seat. I think I watched 4 movies. This couple on the airline had two middle seats and was trying to get together. The aisle guy on that side wouldn’t move because he had long legs and there was no seat in front of him, not as long as mine, in fact he was Indian, so he had practically no legs. Then the girl came to me and asked me to trade. Sorry sista, you got nothing to bargain with. Im already stuck in coach, I will not willingly go to the middle seat. Especially since you are neither old nor hot. Plus, you are just boyfriend girlfriend, you can stand to be apart for 8 hours.

Purgatory

We landed in Delhi and were put into an indefinite holding pattern. Not in the air but trying to navigate that which is the transit area of Delhi. There is this area with about 6 big big seating sections and people are sleeping on the floor, some are in sleeping bags, others in blankets. Peculiar I say to myself. There is one counter with about 5 desks. All say Air India and one says Jet Airways, that’s what we were flying so we made our way there. Now there were about 9 people behind the counter for 5 stations. Sounds like a good thing, huh, except there are no computers, they are doing everything with carbon copy. Peculiar I say to myself. Whats more, all except 1 person is working, the rest are sitting talking or doing nothing. When we get to the counter we see this girl is pleading to get through with a boarding pass but they wont let her for this reason or that. She is asking them to page her boyfriend who already made it through, nopers. The other people look on and go about their business. We finally get to the counter and they take our passport, luggage tags, ticket numbers and write this down 3 times on separate spreadsheets. Peculiar I say to myself. The lady then starts making phone calls and writing more and more things onto the spreadsheet. 45 minutes later we have boarding passes, and to quote my favorite blog writer, I am complete BULLSHIT at this time. How in the hell does India, a tech giant, not have computers, how in the hell does India use carbon paper, how in the hell is only one person working behind that counter. So we now get to go through the joy of airport security, India style. I don’t travel lightly, my bag generally has all of my electronic gadgets and I have 8 pockets and 2 mesh container holders. There have been times where my carry on is weighing in at 50 pounds. After I get a thorough rub down from the man, this lady perceives to open every pocket and take out everything with an on off switch and send it trough x-ray. She herself gets lost in the process of pocket searching and is amazed at how much shit I have with me. She is done and proceeds to do that whole ordeal with my boss. Now we are finally though and trying to find a lounge.

Saturday

Find a lounge, get kicked out, they say try to go to another one, we get booted out. So we are forced to hang with the local populace. Its about 7 in the morning at this time and we stop to get some tea and coffee. Strewn about the airport is advertisements and banners for the Cricket World Cup. India is big into cricket and doing very well at the moment. So everyone has specials for the Cricket world cup. We later stop at bookstore and a bunch of kids are hanging out in the kama sutra section. Laughing and giggling and being a mature 27 year old, I must check this out too. 365 of kama sutra, goodness, how can there be that many variations, there is only so much twister you can do and there are only so many options for holes and things to insert them with. I guess I need to get on with and step it up in the boudoir. So we have about 4 hours to kill and Ive been up for almost 30 hours or so and Im cold and hot and cranky, im menopausal evidently. Get on the plane and it looks like an empty flight, but we aren’t going anywhere. There are only so many flights to Kathmandu so I guess they are waiting for other passengers. It ends up being a full FULL flight. Get to Kathmandu and we are sitting in middle of chaos. You can get your visas at the airport, so as we can, so does everyone else. No one, NO ONE, got their visas beforehand. We don’t even have pictures. But, we have a military escort. And we are blitzkrieged through all that commotion. Get pictures taken, get visas stamped in, go wait for some more time as our luggage shows up in bits and pieces for the next 20 minutes. Oh vey, its these time when you all would not want my job. Get our luggage get on the bus and make the 15 mile trek through the nice part of Kathmandu and through the bad part and through a back alley and through a slum. And I am nicely reminded of why I was blessed to be born in Texas. Get to our hotel, check in, get a nice room key with a ruler attached to it. I haven’t had a non key card key in about 20 years maybe. Get in, check out my awesome twin bed and take a shower. Go downstairs to see about getting some food and we run into some coworkers, so we decide to go on an adventure and see whats what. I took the lead, or rather was forced to lead. I somehow have a good sense of direction and don’t get lost, normally, and can usually find good restaurants. I got lost in Belgrade and had to call a taxi….sad face. So we went out to the main drag and started walking. First we were in search of a ATM, next it was food, we walked down a ways, passed a sitting cow, a cow that would be sitting there all week as you will read later, I don’t know if he couldn’t walk or what, but cows are sacred there so don’t fuck with them. We found this place, called Mama’s Place, it served all kinds of food. It had pizza on the menu and pizza is always safe so we went in. The cricket world cup was going on and it was India vs. Sri Lanka. Two countries that don’t like each other and the restaurant was split between the fans. We were eating with our New Zealand friend and he explained the game to us and finally it made sense. It was a lot of fun to watch, games can sometimes take three days so if you are into cricket you better be prepared. We rooted for both sides because we didn’t want to get into any trouble. Our food came out and it was undercooked, hot but the pizza crust was a little doughy. I have a pretty good stomach in terms of immunity so I went ahead and ate away, washed it down with beer and all was well the next day. We stopped at a corner store on the way home, got some water and snacks and made it back to the hotel. Finally, time for another paragraph.

Sunday

Woke up with my alarm. Kathmandu is 4.75 hours ahead of Lisbon. I don’t know why? I guess because they can, they want to be different. India is 4.5 hours ahead and I guess Nepal wants to be extra different. Went down to breakfast and proceeded to eat 3 plates of food. Something about being jet lagged my body needs extra calories. Had eggs, bacon, potatoes and Nepalese sopapillas. Come que Nepalese sopapillas. One of the dishes at the buffet came with fried bread and the dessert station had honey, viola, a little taste of home. It was glorious. I had that every day that they offered it. Went back to our room because we couldn’t find our pacific counterparts, so I chilled for awhile. Then went for a walk around the block to check out some of the merchants. Finally we found them and we went to work, we worked for about 4 hours that day. Sometimes in these countries you have to be careful about water and food, so I brought these super caloric protein dense snack bars, had one of those for lunch. That night we went out to dinner to this Korean restaurant, it took a long time, but it was good food.

Monday

We didn’t do any work, we just sat through briefings all day, and they went over stuff from the previous conference. Yawn fest, they had internet so I mostly played on that all day, but it was slow slow slow internet. That night they had an ice breaker for us. So in the mean time I went to get a massage. I had looked earlier in the day at a couple around the hotel, but they looked a little sketch. I wasn’t looking for hookers, just wanted a non sexual rub down. One of them had two grandmas working in it, generally the uglier and older the masseuse the better the massage. The other one had some cute girls and I thought, hmm, that might get expensive fast. So the hotel offered a 30% discount so I opted to go there. It was in the same place as the salon and it was the same room, just blocked off by some metal. The table was rather short, or Im rather long. When I put my head down, my legs were hanging off almost up to my knees. I had already stripped down when the girl came in asking me to pay first, so Im trying to do this awkward reach over to get my wallet and keep all necessary parts covered. I had like 10,000 rupees on me, which isn’t much, but here eyes got all huge and I thought mmmm I better hide said wallet. So she comes in and rips off the towel and proceeds to massage my ass for like 30 minutes. Couldn’t have asked for a better massage. Generally massages massage everything except your butt, but not here. During the massage the other ‘room’ was taken by some old man from Australia, he walked in from the pool and the girl asked him to take off his bathing suit and he was all super offended but he gave in, then she asked him to remove his underwear and he wouldn’t and they got into an argument and then the two girls started talking in Nepalese to each other, it was not exactly inducing to a good massage, but whatever my ass was thoroughly pampered. So she turns me over and does the rest and then she whispers to me if I want a breast massage and I think to myself, did she say breast or chest, I say yes and she kind of massages my nipples, well alright that was interesting. Then she asks if I want a hair massage, did she say hand or hair, I say okay and proceeds to rub and scratch my head with oils, it felt pretty nice. Then she taps me on the penis and asks if I want massage and I thought to myself, no way this is actually happening, I thought of all the places that would be upstanding it would be in the hotel. I kind of shrug and think to myself, when in rome, okay, rub rub tug tug…..best massage of my life. She has very broken English and is asking me if I have a wife or girlfriend or Nepalese girlfriend, no to all three, and then she asks me to come back first thing in the morning and I bet it would have involved more fun massage, less useful massage, I said yes, but I didn’t return. As Im getting up, she towels me off and I say is that it. She nods but doesn’t leave the room, should I get dressed I asked, she nods, alright well I guess im getting dressed in front of you, awkwardly put underwear on, then jeans, sock and shoes, try to pull my wallet out of shoes because I thought I could have hid it there safely, now I just look dumb, as Im putting my shirt on she hugs me, oh you so tall, you very very tall man, I like you. STAGE 5 CLINGER!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, nice to meet you, I say and walk out as I can feel her puppy dog eyes still on me. That night the reception is outside in front of the salon and I do my best to keep my back to the salon the whole time. The reception was good, lots of food and drink. And that is the story of my first happy ending massage and it has already been the source of much laughter to some of you that I have told.

Tuesday

Our first day of real work and it goes okay. I give one presentation and then try to steer the data committee or at least help out as best as I can. Finish the day and my bosses stay home to do some work so my coworker and I head out to dinner. Were going to the Mt. Rum Doodle bar. It’s the bar where all the trekers come to when they get off the mountain. It has famous signatures from Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa and about 1000 other people who have climbed the various mountains and ranges in Nepal. The food was pretty good I had some chicken wings and beer. On the way we got lost and were walking down some shady dirty parts of Kathmandu. We came across some dudes speaking English riding mountain bikes and they pointed us in the right direction.

Wednesday

Woke up to find out that the guy I went to dinner with was beyond super sick. He was throwing up all night and wasn’t going to be coming to work that day. Sucky. No one wants to be sick in a foreign country especially one where its unsafe to drink the water. We’ll get back to him tomorrow. Wednesday was the cultural tour event. We went to some hill where you could see everest, but only if it weren’t cloudy, polluted, or overcast. So they joked and said, youll just have to come back. Next we went to this Hindu temple. The compound was really big and we walked around all the shops and bazaars. The architecture was very cool. We weren’t allowed to go in because we weren’t Hindus, but it was still cool. While we were in the museum we had another black out, so we didn’t get to see much of the exhibitions. The bus ride was long and boring but it was still fun. Especially since CE is no longer doing cultural tours. We got back that night and headed to a restaurant and I had more mo mos!! Mo-mos are like pot stickers or yakimandu, take your pick. Steamed noodles with something in the middle. The big things here were chicken, buffalo, mutton, or vegetable. No beef since cows are sacred. Had about 24 of those suckers. They are cheap and go down easy and since they are deep fried, usually pretty safe since they cooked at such a high temperature.

Thursday

Friend is still sick and puking his guts out so we take him to the Embassy where they don’t want to treat him, but after enough coercing and paperwork checks they allow him in. They give him a shot, some meds, and an IV. I saw him that day after work and he looked like he had been hit by a bus, the bus stopped reversed over him, and then drove back over him again. We did some more work that day but we got to stop soon so we could go to the cultural dinner. It was a nice evening. We had cultural dancers, some cute ones too, then a nice cocktail hour, followed by a really good buffet. I had a lot of good conversations that night, made some new friends. Always a lot of fun.

Friday

Had another day of briefs and just sat through all of that. Packed up a little before lunch and then had to attend another brief with all the generals. That evening we went back to the Rum Doodle, had some more chicken wings and beer and then called it a day.

Saturday

Went to the airport with about 3 hours to spare and we got into the security section with about 2 hours to spare so we just sat and sat and sat some more. Finally, when we got to go through my security my bags were checked just as thoroughly as they were in India. Every pocket was examined and every zipper was opened. I was rubbed down almost as nicely as I was rubbed down with the massage. Then we got to our holding cell and waited some more. Then they called our flight and we went through pre-pre boarding check checks. Check boarding pass, ID, and go through bags again. Walk out onto the tarmac and pre-checks. Check boarding pass, passport, and bags again. I was checked 3 times in a matter of 500 feet. Im not sure why, I can recall someone saying that Nepal doesn’t want to be seen as the weak link in global security. They sure aren’t. It was a little ridiculous if you ask me, but I guess the plane was super safe. Then we get to India Purgatory again and we are forced with going through that carbon copy transit area again. I think we were there for 2 hours of the 7 hours we had there. We had to do some willing and dealing, phone calls, flash the black cards, and say we were flying First class. We weren’t, but they didn’t need to know that. So we finally get to some lounge and Im freaking tired by this time, have some tea and some small snacks. Watch a movie and then head over to our flight that wasn’t leaving until midnight. The airline security was just as bad again in India. Getting felt up, quadruple checks of boarding passes and passports. The flight was from Delhi to Chicago. 15 hours of flight, glory glory. We were flying up over Russia, the north pole and down over Canada. LUCKILY, I was in business class. I watched 4 movies and I think took a 7 hour nap. That is my new record for sleeping on an airplane. We landed in Chicago right about 5 am, but not quite 5 am, so we were forced to sit on the plane because the USA doesn’t open up until 5am. Thank you very much lazy TSA. Why there would be a flight that lands before you can disembark I don’t know, why not leave India later in the night, make a 130 flight, who cares, everyone is already walking about looking like a zombie. We get checked in and make our way to the showers, then head over to the first class lounge. At least they have food there. Hang out for a few hours and then make our way back to Tucson. Touched down about 11am and went to see the cousins and then headed home. WWWWhhhhheeeeewwwwww……………I was tired for the next three days. 1 more trip and 4 more stamps.

Talk to you all later,

jacob