Airport Tales: #Travel to #USA by flight

(I wrote this in 2006. Since people may find it interesting, I am posting again. Please read at your own risk for grammatical erros. I just made one there for ya!)

Reach airport at least 3 hrs before the flight, it is important (if this is your first flight).
Friends shall be waiting in-front of the Gate of the Airport.
Be there a little early so that you can say bye to all properly, not in hurry.
Hug everyone. You are gonna miss them for some good time.
These are your friends who helped you to laugh and gave courage in bad times. These are friends who cared far far away from your native place. Supported you morally , kept you high. Just mind it : if you have no friends saying you bye, you had been like evil in Nepal..........OR you had had real
bad time there.
When You reach the INTL' airport of Nepal, go to the tax counter and pay Airport tax (it was ~1500 may have changed).
Go to baggage scanner. (in front of the tax counter)
They will scan it and tag it.
Submit the baggage to airways counter. For my case, Supriyo was there. She helped me a lot.
Ask if you have to claim the baggage some-where in the middle of flight transits (most probably not, ask if you are getting them direcly to the last port).
My baggage was overloaded it was above 71 kg. They would allow only 32 kgx2. I had to return many good books. Think of books which might be useful...
 After submitting the baggage, they will give you the Boarding pass and Baggag claim tag (sticked to the ticket). Do not ever think of loosing it. Keep it in safe place. With your passport (and Visa )and I-20. You will need to show/submit the Boarding pass while entering the plane. Check whether they have given the Boarding pass of all the flights or you have to pick it on some transits (ASK).
 This is the time of Departure.

Bairod ko bato!

While preparing for SLC, we used to write essays on "The Tribhuvan Highway", also known as Bairod ko baato!
While bouncing back and forth to/from Kathmandu to Hetauda, this used to be one of the preferred choice, as another highway was more than 100km longer. Plus, none other roads could beat the scenic views from palung, and sim-bhanjyang.
So, you get into "Sajha" bus at 7 AM, and you will be dropping in Kalanki by 1:30/or/2 PM at the cheapest price.

The travel of about 7 hour would take you from point A to B separated about 42 km away "as the crow flies". However, one should appreciate the range of mountain that it had to go thru! Because of the nasty turns, it could also have been termed vomit route as about one in ten of the travelers would be doing so.

The distance between Hetauda and Ktm is about 26 miles "as crow flies".
Also note the great mahabharat parbat on the inset.
One should appreciate traveling thru it!

As you can note, in order to go to the destination Kathmandu, which is north-east from Hetauda, the Bairod goes north, and then turns east. Kind of like vector addition example using triangle. Again, mind gut wrenching turns and twists.

For google navigation, it is showing only 3 hours: at reasonable 25 miles per hour rate (or 40 km/hr)!

Because of the exhausting mountain range, the road turns around so that it is about 3 times what would a plane do. Eventually, people explored and found possibilities of short-cuts, which are being used. So, the question for the day is why did the Bairod took so many turns? (My highest regards to the people who worked hard to get it to working, and several who died during its construction.) The question is given the technology at the time, could we have done better?

V01
---
-->

Meeting Asha, the baby rhino @fortworthzoo

We paid visit to baby rhino in fort worth zoo.

One of the main reason was seeing Asha-the baby rhino. I have written previously about the contest to name the baby rhino in here. Asha was born on August 16, 2012. The fortworthzoo takes great pride on the successful breeding because this is a rare/hard event, and done for the first time in the state of texas.

The 25-year old mother Shanti and 22-year old father Arun  (one-horned rhino species native to Nepal) was gifted by Nepal government in 1990. Asha is their third calf.

There is a wonderful safariSam blog if you wanted to read more:
http://www.safarisamblog.com/big-baby-at-the-fort-worth-zoo/

Fortworth is a great zoo. Most of the animals were active during our weekend visit. My recommendation is visiting Texas wild first (which is on the farther side) and returning back to Asia falls afterwards.

The mother Shanti, loaned fron San Francisco Zoo

Asha!

The baby rhino follows her protective mother.

The box in which "Arun", the male rhino, arrived at the Fort Worth Zoo in 1990 as a rare gift from the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation in Nepal.

 ---
-->
To me the excitement was that, I was meeting rhino after about about 20 years! (saw one in SadarChidiyakhana in Jawlakhel).

It is always good to see someone from your country after long time :) :P :D 

Website for Online Ticketing

I have been trying the following for online booking of tickets:

• http://www.hipmunk.com/ (I like it's clean layout and price comparison bar diagrams that are laid on time scale. However, some of the times, it can not find the flights.)
• Expedia.com (The famous one.)
• http://www.bookingbuddy.com/ (I like it's tabbed comparison between sites like expedia, orbitz etc.)

Recently I also found that  bing also gives nicer way to search for flights.

Any other good suggestions?

Free for all @ Airport

I am sharing some interesting memory from during my last visit to Nepal.
I was coming out of the airport  with a friend and found that two unknown people had come to receive me inside the luggage claim compartment. They behaved very friendly and wanted to carry our stuff. Ohh how nice of them! Well, I just had a suit case and thanked them. Thanks but no thanks!
Nope, they were determined to help us. Well, after few pull, I said, "well, I donot have any money. So, do not expect anything that you will be getting". They were fine with that. That made it more interesting. I had not seen anyone who could carry my luggage for free!
We kept on insisting that the luggage were light and we could do it ourselves by pushing the cart. They behaved as if they were siblings separated at birth. Out of irritation, I said, OK! But warned them that I really do not have spare money to give them as my brother was coming to pick me up. The reply was how is that possible that a person coming from aboard does not have some dollar money. That was interesting question to myself because I had been using plastic money all over!!!

I looked into my purse and they also grabbed the opportunity to have a peek into it. Incidently, they saw $20 greenery! "That should be enough", they said, "well, that will do".

PS: as my post was backlogged, Basant G also published his feelings. I thought it is time for this guy to come out. Basant G's post explains what happens after you come out. I will also share my experience in another post.
Airport: Free for all!

Prize in Chau Chau... Noodles

It should be obvious fact to many nepali people outside the country that they are brought with chau chau (noodles) as a handy gift. I also had few.
One of my friend once told me a joke about it...

Question: How to find out that someone in airport is Nepali?
Answer: - Check the bag... if it contains chau chau then s/he is nepali.
It is that simple!

I remember, once wai wai had increased the price (from 10 to 11?) but kept the coupon of Rs. 1 in nearly every package so that people would not feel it that way...
Even sometimes car and hundreds of thousand came inside the package. Winning bumper prize in Chau chau was in great fashion.
I am not sure how big is it now.

On the lighter side... Recently, I won something in mayos chau chau.
:)
How do I redeem it?

West End Studios 850 West End Ave.,New York, NY 10025 in USA: a nightmare stay!

Recently, I got a bad experience of travelling.
The Hostel.com affiliated West End Studios located at 850 West End Ave.,New York, NY 10025 was my choice for a night stay during my two day trip to New York City.
The location was OK (I could use subways to commute, not so bad.) near the 102nd street on west end.
But except that everything went worst.

The room was ready 2 hrs after we got into the studio.
The elevator was bad, we had to walk all the way up.
The worst case was the fact that the receptionist was very very rude. She yelled at another customer in front of me. (The poor guy was foreign student).

Another very bad impression for me was the fact that along with too many others, we were put in room which had no AC or cooler or nothing.
I became really angry because I felt I paid to suffer. Remind you that the temperature in NYC in the whole week had stayed around 106F or so. I went and complained, the creepy receptionist was sitting in a AC and said could do nothing (sure!). Another guy tried looking into and gave us 6th floor to try (with no AC in there too!).
That was really bad.

I wish even my enemy should not stay there.
My feeling is that this one should be removed from hostelworld.com or hostels.com

Want to try how she speaks? (You know it is her when she speaks.)
The phone number is (212) 662-6000

Here is what others say:
http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/WestEndStudios-NewYork-805/reviews/