of illegal residents and NEPAL

This last Sunday my Bangladesh visa expired. For good. Like the crooked man at the passport office said, I had to leave the country.. or get married. Instead, I left the country. The cruel irony is that I've had one too many debates with my friends at WallaWalla about the illegal immigration problem the United States has on its hands... And now I was technically no better. But Josiah, Elle, and I had a plan.

At the beginning of December I had to leave to restart my (then) 60-day pass to Bangladesh. Elle and I had the brilliant idea of going to Nepal to meet up with friends of hers instead of going into India for the day. We found really cheap flights over and knew we could find cheap hostels over in Nepal. In the end though, we decided we didn't feel safe going with just the two of us. Thus I went into India for the day. BUT that is also around the time that Josiah showed up, feet itching with the travel bug.

After the whole ordeal with the crooked man, Josiah and I started to think about maybe going to Nepal to reapply for a visa. The tickets were still cheap, hostels still available, and Elle was on board too! Thanks to different family members for sending money as Christmas presents, plus money that I earned during the summer, I'm writing this from Hotel Blue Horizon in Thamel, Kathmandu, Nepal. No joke! :D

Today was quite the ordeal though. Elle booked her flight a day later than Josiah and I and was therefore told she had to fly a day later (apparently they needed a week to process her credit card). We flew with Biman Airlines which is not the most renowned airline in the world and they ended up changing our tickets to fly out an hour sooner and also changed Elle's return ticket to have a 3hr layover in India somewhere. It was somewhat of a mess. Elle wasn't too excited to be separated from us on both flights because we had tried to get the return one all together. While she was in the midst of a heated discussion with the airline people, she looked at the ticket confirmation I had printed out and discovered that our tickets were detoured through India as well! Good times...


Elle and I had repacked our backpacks the night before and were ready to go early this morning. After finding out we were all on the same flight, we headed to the airport. Elle brought all her stuff along in hopes that she could get on the same flight as us. And miracle of all miracles, her flight was able to get switched from tomorrow to today :) PLUS, we got all our flights changed to a day earlier so that we don't have the layover in India. So exciting!


There really isn't too much of a security check point anywhere in the Dhaka airport so we had a lot of time to kill. I was supposed to pay a fee for being illegally in Bangladesh at the immigration desk but smiling really does get you far in this country! So I didn't have to pay any fine! With all our time to kill, we had a snack in a cafe and Josiah and Elle taught me the basics of poker. I think we are going to hunt down some jelly beans and play 'for real'. lol

[Funny story: Elle and I had to pee really badly after going through the immigration desk so we left Josiah and hunted down a bathroom. We followed the sign for toilets down a curvy hallway to only one open door. Elle had to go really badly so I held her bag as she went into the stall. As she was in there, I looked around and then joked that this was a unisex bathroom because there were urinals off to the side. Then I looked on the door and it had the man symbol on the front... AND just then, a airport worker walked in and said "Lady toilets that way" pointing to left. I busted up laughing and said "ami bondue shi-shi" (my friend pee lol). Just after she left and Elle came out of the stall, a confused Bengali man walked in as we giggled past him. Oh man... so funny...]

The flight over was good... nothing too special. Honestly, I was expecting a 16-passenger plane with goats walking up and down the aisle and the pilot serving us our beverages. That's the low expectation I had for this Bangladeshi airline lol. But because it's technically an 'international' flight, we actually got drinks and food! The food was awful... but food nonetheless!

As we began our decent into the Kathmandu airport, the clouds began to clear and mountains littered the ground below us. It was so so so so cool to see! I took a lot of pictures but most of them didn't turn out very well due to scratches on the window. Nonetheless... SO cool! I guess I didn't realize this, but Kathmandu is HUGE. Like Huge Huge! I had an idea in my head that it was small and quaint with little huts and such. Nope. It's kinda like a slightly cleaner, slightly less congested traffic, less people-d form of Dhaka. Really! I'm definitely not complaining. The biggest difference to me is the smells. Dhaka smells like death and exhaust--Kathmandu smells like incense :) BIG difference!


After settling into our hostel/hotel and putting our values in the safe, we headed out for food. Kathmandu is such a hippy-ish place it wasn't hard to find a vegetarian restaurant for Josiah. We ordered rice with about a ton of cumin in it, some masalla dosa (potato/veggie mash in a crepe-like shell), spicy dhal, and a veggie szechuan dish. The food was heavily seasoned but not too bad in the end. It's kinda fun to experience new foods in their original countries.


Then we wandered the streets a little, browsing in shops and such. I swear, North Face has a contract with 80% of the shops to sell its merchandise! Everything here is North Face. Well, North Face or yak hair. Speaking of which, my hands were freezing to the bone so I bought a cute pair of $2 yak hair gloves. I love them :)

Now we are planning our week-long attack on Kathmandu. We have a Monkey Temple to visit, Buddha's birthplace, a visa to apply for, and the most famous temple in the world to see... More to come... :D

ami tomake bhalobashi (dang.. I should learn how to say 'I love you' in Nepalese!)