Advertisement
Published: February 4th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Big Ben
. London, England in front of Big Ben ... on the way to Westminster Abbey . I left for Nepal a little over a week ago, and although I’ve only been gone for eight days, I feel like it’s been eight years. Every minute of this trip has been filled with so many amazing experiences that I’ve realized it’s probably going to be difficult to put it all into words. Anyway, let me begin to try …
I think my trip over to Kathmandu officially started the Friday prior to leaving with a call from the airlines saying that my flight schedule was being changed and that I’d need to re-book my New Delhi, India layover.. Long story short, because the change was last-minute and no e-tickets were available, they realized I’d have to finalize the change once I arrived in London during my layover there.
Tuesday morning: Day 2 of travel: I got to London at 6 am on Tuesday morning and since the airline counters weren’t open yet, I grabbed a ticket for the underground (subway) and a map of the city, and I headed down to the Covent Gardens stop. (Side note for my Colorado people - the Warren Miller sponsored Jeep I saw parked near Buckingham Palace made me laugh out
Warren Miller
Colorado meets London? whatever ... I'll take it as a good sign :) loud and I took as a good sign - who’d have thought??!)
Anyway, I made my way down through Picadilly Circle, Trafalgar Square, to Big Ben and then stumbled upon the Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is easily one of the most impressive and overwhelming structures I’ve ever seen… Inside, quite literally every single square centimeter and nook-&-cranny is filled with homage to great figures in English history. The few “illegal” pictures I snapped really don’t do the place justice… Anyway, getting back to the airport, I got my tickets switched after nearly 2 hours of dealing with three different airlines, only to be told that my luggage was probably not going to make it to my new flight… (yeah, it didn’t and today, nearly 8 days later, I’m hoping it will come in maybe this afternoon!)
Anyway, finally making it to India the next morning at 10:45, I ended up missing my connecting flight (after all that work in London) because the guy who had to escort me to the other terminal (since I don’t have an Indian visa) thought that I was on the Jet Lite flight (at 3 p.m.) instead of the Jet Airways flight (which
Westminster Abbey
The Westminster Abbey ... if you haven't read about it or seen pics, it's well worth the google check!! :) left at noon)… I kept telling him I was going to miss it, to which he kept replying, “Enough time, enough time.” Sooo…. I had another layover of a day but which felt like a week since I was food poisoned by the three bites of sandwich I ate (after my airport escort left me) at the Subway sub shop. (Made fresh daily sure, but P.S., the food is rancid!) I literally threw up for nearly 12 hours straight, but thank goodness I was able to at least find a lounge with a (relatively clean) couch where I could pass out in between running to the (relatively filthy) restroom… I really couldn’t wait to leave that place!
On a side note, I did make a new friend (just prior to the Subway meal episode) who works as the field director for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Sri Lanka (on her way back from spending the holidays in her home country of Costa Rica…) The stories she shared of her daily life in Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka were nothing short of unimaginable… Regular shellings in the local village, roadway lock-downs , military & Red Cross checkpoints and constant threats
of civil war outbreaks are part of daily life there…
Day 4 of travel: Thursday (Do you see why this trip seems like an eternity now?? 😊 I finally left India and arrived in Nepal… It was pretty amazing to see the Himalayas for the first time and they were every bit as beautiful as you would expect. Upon arriving, my language instructor’s brother, Amrit, picked me up from the airport and we made our way in a taxi through the completely foreign world of Kathmandu City. Unless you’ve been here, I can now understand that pictures and videos can’t fully explain that which is this city… it’s truly a world of its own. Driving (or more appropriately, sitting) in traffic consists of dodging oncoming cars, mopeds, people on bicycles, people on foot, random stray dogs and of course the occasional cow grazing on heaps of trash strewn along every inch of roadway… I do have to admit though that there’s almost an order to the extreme chaos, and in some strange way, it kind of all works.
... more to come in a little while ...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0481s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
erin heintzman
non-member comment
Amazing blog!
Your writings are absolutely wonderful and I thank you for sharing them with the rest of us. It really blows my mind to read what you are experiencing and am looking forward to many more. Hope you are well! Love you!