WTF?! About all we can say after our experience leaving Nepal for India. After such a pleasureable experience meeting and staying with our Warmshower hosts James and Julia in Kathmandu we were off our game a bit when we arrived at the Kathmandu International airport for our easy, or supposed easy flight to India. What we learned is that in this region things are never easy, even when they are. For starters we arrived at the airport after a pleasant pedal from the hosts' home. Thinking we had plenty of time we packed the bikes (in record time I might add as we have become quite proficient at this point in the trip) and entered the chaotic old building representing the terminal. We thought everything was fine until we tried to pay for bikes (which always incur an excessive luggage charge even though they are foldable and bagged). They were not able to accept a card as payment, no worries, the ATM was right around the corner. Think again, as then first of our seemingly endless array of troubles started. As is usual there must have been a power outage and none of the ATMs were functional. We didn't have nearly the money needed to cover the cost. Negotiating started and we came up with a compromise that we would pay half the cost now, which we had in USD and the other half in Delhi where we would get our connection. By this point we went from early to just on time, or we thought, as for some inexplicable reason they made last call as I was waiting in the endless 'Men' security line as Chiara breezed through the nonexistent 'Woman' security check (see 'Only men travel in Nepal'). Instant karma for all those public restroom lines I am sure. We hustled to the plane,we boarded, and we were off a full 15 minutes ahead of schedule, without even a hint of explanation. OK?!...at least we and the bikes made it and we thought the worst was behind us but upon landing in Delhi we found out, after painstaking inquiries (info booths just don't exist) that we needed to take all our luggage from here to the Domestic terminal which was a 15 minute bus ride down the road and to top it off we were now running late as Chiara had to spend in excess of 20 minutes at immigration while 5 adult, trained 'professionals' worked at figuring out how to fingerprint scan a person missing the tip of a finger. It would have been comical if it weren't so ridiculous. We had at this point figured we were going to miss our connection flight to Bangalore but we might as well make the journey to the domestic terminal and find out our options. We arrived and after tussling and arguing about how we were to move the bikes and bags without a trolley, that were banned from the elevators ?!? we went to the ticket counter and the nice woman said that there was no reason why we would not make our flight. We were confused until we looked at their clock and compared it to ours...15 minutes behind!? Um, what type of wormhole did we pass through anyway? She told us to proceed straight to check-in as we did and found them accommodating even though we were still worried we would be cutting it close. Our last surprise came when we found out the flight had been delayed 30 minutes, a message we could not receive as we had not had the time to get a SIM card in the international airport because we were worried we were late so we did have a working phone to get flight alerts and as I stated prior, info booths are all but non-existent...dizzying to say the least. We made it to the loading area with minutes to spare, I got some money from an ATM, after waiting behind a gentleman who was doing god-knows-what for at least 5 minutes in front of me, bought some airport sandwiches (our first taste of authentic Indian cuisine) and we boarded for the last leg of this endless journey.
The difficult finger, game night in Bangalore at Rahul and Rahdika's great house,
A oft-ignored message on the street, amazing Bangalore bookstore
Thank goodness our arrival to Bangalore made up for all of this days mayhem. Though being late in the evening we called Rahul, our Warmshower host who ordered us an Uber taxi (at his suggestion, apparently the airport taxis charge 2-3X the rates for the same trip) and we made the 30 minute journey to their home where we were welcomed warmly with a cold beer and eager ears allowing the inevitable venting that comes with a travel day such as ours.
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