Pokhara Part 2
Kempegowda International Airport is large, modern, impressive and patrolled by soldiers with machine guns who look coldly efficient. Queues and the military identify Indian airports I thought as I waited in line, wondering how my electric guitar woud be received. Would it be classed as second-hand electrical goods as in Vietnam, or excess baggage?
I had, as usual, a small backpack on with my laptop, phone, wallet, passport and papers and a few handy items in it. I somehow managed as well a large heavy suitcase, a violin in its own case – this was new – and the electric guitar which I had packed in a synthesiser container as these were the right size, more or less, and no such receptacle came with the guitar. It came in a bag but that was asking for trouble at the airports. I had seen how things get thrown around and left in the sun.
Each country had different rules regarding transport and luggage. In Nepal cigarette lighters weren’t allowed. Everywhere Swiss army knives had to go in the suitcase or would be confiscated. On Lao trains you can’t carry a small knife in your baggage. Their railway department must have an extensive collection of such items from unsuspecting customers. In India they had sophisticated surveillance and a peremptory manner, as if tourists were the curse of their unfortunate lives.
Surprisingly, though, I got through without any problems. Some day I will gain confidence that this will always be so but I don’t have it yet. I can’t even see why airport buildings don’t fall down. What holds up the rooves? I won’t even mention tall buildings. But I kept getting through customs and airline counters with ease. Of course I wasn’t doing anything nefarious but that never used to count for much. Perhaps these days it does, in Asia at least.
The only awkward condition at Kempegowda was that I needed an ongoing ticket from Kathmandu. Fortunately I had one to Pokhara, provided by my good friend Bimal who ran a travel agency in Lakeside who had paid it for me, to be reimbursed on my return, as there was no way I could tranfer the money from India. This was not a ticket out of Nepal so it seemed strange that it was accepted but that must have been the regulation. They don’t want tourists getting stuck in Kathmandu, apparently. The airline people would know where Pokhara was and they looked at it and talked about it for a while before nodding their approval.
The airline check-in guy (please contact me if you have the correct name for these people) asked if I had a musical keyboard and I replied “No, it’s an eletric guitar” and he laughed. I was glad he could see the humour in it. Nothing is exactly what it seems around an airport. There are spies and people watching them, then there is an army of workers who can smell the money walking past. I am eternally disappointed in the taxi business around airports as I know that taxi drivers are important people who carry out a lot of duties that help the rest of us get around safely but these few cowboys at the airports don’t reflect well on the rest. I used to be a taxi driver, in case I didn’t mention it. In Sydney in the late eighties, for a year and a half, around the time the big pilots strike hit Australia and cost a lot of jobs, creating a surplus of drivers. Such was my professional and financial fortune in those days.
The flight back to Kathmandu was smooth enough. The last bit was picturesque with cloudy peaks floating past. Three and a half hours to that tiny baggage carousel and the thronged carpark. Then I had to apply for my visa though a computer which I only accidentally found out about after standing in the wrong queue for twenty minutes. My hotel room in Thamel was interesting.
After a long, serpentine taxi ride through quiet city streets and tiny alleys in Thamel I arrived at my budget hotel. The cafe downstairs was kind enough to make me a coffee at the late hour when I finally arrived. The young men running the place seemed a bit out of it but one of them carried my suitcase upstairs. Maybe they were just tired, but they were helpful and friendly.
The room was on the third floor with a nice view of a public square with a little Hindu temple in the centre of it. I spent quite a while gazing out that window, wondering at the tall, narrow buildings crammed in together in a variety of styles and colours from different eras. The people on the street were poor and dourly dressed but they were friendly and good humoured. Cows ambled around on lanes almost too narrow for small cars. Shops continued wall to wall up to the centre, not far away, where the familiar police presence acompanied the Kashniri and Tibetan shops and a plethora of small cafes.
The next day I flew to Pokhara to be greeted by my housekeeper in the chilly concrete wilderness of the shiny new airport, surrounded, this time, by strikingly visible snow covered alps. It was fresh and clean, eerily quiet and calm.
Travels to Nepal 