July 2 - Goodbye to Nepal

July 2 Day 138

         Our last day in Nepal started with an excellent breakfast in the garden of our hotel.  We had a late flight and so paid half fare to keep the room until we left, something we'd been doing when convenient since we found out about this option.        

         We met a Kopan friend for lunch and bumped into 4 others just walking around Thamel.  Christian talked about the fundraiser for Genessis and then showed us his singing bowl from a therapt class he just took.  He spoke about using his skills when he got back o Chile but was not sure whether he should charge for his services or not.

         The afternoon was spent catching up on the net and booking ahead for the next leg of our trek.  We went out to a close place for dinner and had fun watching everyone go by from the restaurant's balcony and enjoyed the food.

         On the way to the airport our cab died going up an incline so we rolled back to where the driver could pull over, which took ten minutes of honking traffic behind us slowly moving out of the way.  He then hailed another cab, put us in it and told us to pay the new driver while the new driver paid him a cut based on how far we had gotten.

         The airport was improved from what we remembered and we got through first security.  We noticed that the monks ahead of us left a tube and we couldn't see them so left it with a guard.  The lineups looked random because there was nothing on the screens above the desk so we got into the shortest lines.  In my line someone asked where we were going and pointed me to the correct line, I have no idea how he knew.  In front of me were the monks, who were glad to get their tube back, it was an expensive thanka painting!  After we checked in the monitors turned on and we could see that our airline was where it said it was.

         At customs the foreign visitor line was short and the migrant worker line was very long.  i had heard about the hordes of Indian workers going to the middle east into gated communities where journalists are forbidden to visit, but Nepalis are doing this too.  I think it was people from villages who had never seen an airport before as they rushed and pushed ahead of others through security and cut ahead of everyone as they went through gates, causing more than a little annoyance.  We found seats in the waiting room away from them and close to an AC unit so we were okay.

         Our airline had entertainment screens but didn't activate them on our first flight until everyone was fast asleep.  On the connecting flight they were on from the beginning but had no movies or tv shows loaded.  You could read your book or watch the plane slowly move over a map.