October 18, 19 and 20, 2019, Calgary to Kathmandu
Fred and I have a history of not celebrating our wedding anniversary. In fact, each of us has gone at least one year during the past 25 where we completely forgot our special day 😮. But two years ago, Fred shared he wanted to do something special for our 25th and after some discussion, we decided to travel to Nepal and trek to Everest Base Camp. Yup, we opted to take a romantic holiday – one where we likely wouldn’t shower for days and one where the days would zap all our energy that all we would want to do at night was sleep 😆.
Typically, my trip reports don’t include travel by car and plane but given our travel days were adventures themselves, I have included them. A tremendous amount of research and planning went into preparing for this vacation – finding the best sequencing of flights, determining what vaccinations we needed, identifying the gear we would require, prepping Nic and Sam to care for themselves, the cats and the house, etc. But before we knew it, October 18th was here, and Sam was driving us to the Calgary airport.
While I typically like to avoid Air Canada whenever possible because quite frankly I find Air Canada incredibly lacking in customer service, continuously losing bags and appearing to not care, and constantly changing flights to the detriment of your travel plans, the cost difference with other airlines was too substantial to choose anyone other than them. In hindsight, likely a mistake. Fred and I were to fly from Calgary to Vancouver, Vancouver to Hong Kong and then Hong Kong to Kathmandu. Air Canada assured us numerous times that the layover in Hong Kong would be enough to catch our next flight. We already had 90 minutes, and Air Canada told us that the 14-hour flight to Hong Kong would most likely land early so we would have more than 90 minutes. Well, our flight landed 25 minutes late and apparently, well known to Air Canada as Cathay Pacific is their partner airline, Cathay Dragon is notorious for bumping passengers if they are not at the gate at least 60 minutes in advance of departure time. Fred and I, along with 4 others were greeted at the gate and told we were bumped from the flight even though we only had to walk across the isle to the gate, we already had our boarding passes and would be there well before they started the boarding process. As a result, Fred and I had to wait 7.5 hours in Hong Kong, take a 9-hour flight to Qatar, wait 3 hours and then take a 4-hour flight to Kathmandu. There was NO Air Canada representative in the Hong Kong airport to talk to and when fellow passengers from Vancouver called customer service, they were treated horribly, and Air Canada offered nothing, absolutely nothing, for the incredible inconvenience they caused 😡. Fred and I lost a day of our holiday. I will say that Qatar Airlines who took us to Qatar were simply wonderful! Apparently, Air Canada has a very poor reputation even in Hong Kong and Qatar representatives shared what happened to us, happens all the time. And for anyone following the news right now, Air Canada is not even taking calls these days, leaving customers panicking. So not surprising, I am NOT a fan of Air Canada!
By the time we arrived in Kathmandu, Fred and I were utterly exhausted, and excited. The airport was bustling with people, most of whom were trying to figure out the process for obtaining a visa. We met so many hikers from all over the world. It seemed everyone was in Nepal to trek somewhere in Sagarmatha National Park, which is a World Heritage site, and where Mount Everest is located. Once we got our visa, we grabbed our bags, went through a pretty lax security process, and went outside to find our driver, who would take us to the Kathmandu Guest House.
The drive to our hotel was fascinating. There were no traffic lights or signs, often no lanes and lots of beeping horns. But it worked. Perhaps because the drivers focus on each other and on the pedestrians and animals wandering about, rather than on lanes and traffic lights and traffic signs, there are very few accidents. And even though it appears chaotic, drivers are patient and use their horns to signal “I am here” or “you go ahead.”
The Kathmandu Guest House is a beautiful hotel located in the Thamel area in Kathmandu where one can find all the trekking and climbing stores and outfitters. We didn’t have a chance to explore the area because it was already late in the day and we were flying to Lukla bright and early the next day. All we had time for was a meeting with our outfitter, packing up the trekking duffel bags and putting the rest of our stuff in suitcases to be left in Kathmandu, and a shower.
