by Kelly Sharp

Created on: September 17, 2010

It seemed so simple. Fly from Kathmandu to Bangkok, then from Bangkok to San Francisco.  Two flights, 30 hours and we would be home and our two-week trek through the Himalayan mountains would be nothing more than a fond memory. Or so we hoped.

But when we showed up at the Kathmandu Airport it was empty and the ticket counter was closed. I desperately looked for someone to tell me what was going on, when a janitor finally took pity on me. “You go back hotel now,” he said. “No plane today, you try again tomorrow, wing fall off.” While part of me was thankful the wing fell off before we boarded, the other half wondered how we were going to get out of Nepal!  As there are only two airlines servicing Kathmandu that fly twice a week, if I couldn't get us rescheduled we were going to be stuck for who knew how long.

I wandered the airport, looking for someone who could help, and finally found myself in a maintenance office where I simply held out my tickets to anyone who walked by. At first, there were several other passengers who found their way to the same office, but as time passed, they simply gave up and went back to their hotels. Finally, after three hours, the man who appeared to be in charge took my tickets and told me he could get us re-booked onto a Thai Airlines flight leaving that afternoon for Bangkok. He handed me a computer printout with instructions to not lose it since he was not technically re-issuing me a ticket and told us we were booked business class from Bangkok to San Francisco as an apology for our predicament. 

We arrived in Bancock at midnight, with instructions to be at the ticket counter at five a.m. to confirm our flight. When we showed up, however, the ticket agent told us that not only were we not booked for business class but we were not even booked on the flight. Seems the man back in Nepal was so eager to get me out of his office he was willing to do anything, even if that meant re-booking us on another airline then making us someone else’s problem.

So there we were, in Bangkok, wondering how we were going to get back to the United States. Luckily, the ticket agent at China Air took pity on us and re-booked us using our original tickets for the flight we had missed the day before. The only catch?  We had to go through Taiwan with an eight-hour layover. Great, we thought, time for shopping! But alas, it was not to be. Our flight to Taiwan, delayed for three hours, left us stuck in the

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