Ruminations for the King – flight cancellations in Pokhara

The first weekend in Nepal I went to Kathmandu with my friend N. We were supposed to meet her friend S. there, who came in a day early to paraglide. Pokhara valley is renowned for paragliding, so that was going to be our plan – go up with an instructor and fly. I was looking forward to it very much.

Friday night we hung out in beautiful Pokhara – it’s situated on a lake, watching the sunset from Mike’s Café with the sun illuminating the hills is spectacular, add your other superlatives, and you get the idea. Very cool. The nightlife was rather sad – there weren’t many tourists (see the Maoists note), so the disco at Club Paradiso that we went to was mostly populated by locals. Let’s say we outdanced them on the dance floor. Those of you who’ve seen me dance will draw a parallel to the sad state of night life in that town.

Saturday morning! Paragliding! Giddy Up! We went to the office of “Blue Sky Paragliding”, met our instructor, had a tea (every major business transaction is always accompanied by tea) and waited to see what the wind was doing. After 30 minutes of waiting and watching the mountain skyline, we learned that the wind was doing fine, but the king was not. We knew the king was visiting Pokhara at the time (knowledge reinforced by a literal army of troops everywhere, checking all vehicles and searching all locals), and apparently he was not a fan of paragliders. The reason was that of the gliders landed ‘too close to the palace’ the day before, and as a result there was a unilateral ban on any paragliding flights for the next two weeks.

And that was it. Absolutely no way around it. The news was greeted with minimum of surprise/apprehension from the operators of the business – apparently, the “king’s whims” are fairly common, and manifest themselves differently all the time. Now, I realize kings are allowed a certain degree of eccentrics – they are “absolute rulers” after all. But this is 21st century. I’m not upset because as a result I never got a chance to go paragliding – that’s OK, I can pay the same $70 and do it somewhere else later. But what about the business operators? There are two paragliding businesses in Pokhara, and they are both out of their jobs for the next two weeks. And with the tourist trade in the gutter to begin with (thanks to other actions both by the King and the Maoists), these guys don’t have much in terms of savings or “we’ll make it up next month” to fall back on.

Sure, I understand that “national security” means something – but the “paragliding closure” is very emblematic of the pattern of behaviour of king and other senior officials in Nepal. In the country so dependent on tourism, I think some thought needs to be given to the business needs of the tourist trade first before proclaiming decrees that put citizens already struggling for business further into the whole. Maybe I’ve spent too much time in the US, but it seems that what’s bad for business, is bad for Nepal.

Doha: worst airport ever

Short Version:

Doha is probably the worst airport ever. I flew Qatar Airways (a very fine airline once you are inside the plane) toand from Kathmandu and had a 5-6 hour layover each way in Doha. It’s impossibly overcrowded, so couple the delirium of changing time zones, sleepiness, slight apprehension of going to Nepal for the first time and inability to find a place to sit/rest, multiply by 5 hours, and you get the idea.

Longer Version:

For those that don’t know, Doha is in Qatar, on the Arabian Peninsula. I landed and took off in the dark, so I can’t say much about the scenery. At the risk of being close-minded, I’d venture to say that they have a lot of sand and oil pumps.

The airline is pretty cool – the staff is multi-ethnic, they hire from all the countries they fly to, and they boast that they have 55 ethnicities working for them. That translates into a lot of people from South East Asia and, surprisingly, a clearly Russian attendant that I spotted in Doha. How she ended up there, no idea (actually, I have a couple. Probably by plane).

Back to the gripes about the airport – it’s just way too small to support the amount of traffic going through it. First, when you get off the airplane, you stand in a long 30-minute line to go through the security to get into the airport. That was my first sighting of men wearing traditional Arab dress. Pretty cool, and a little surreal.

Once you are past the security check, you have 3 options: go into the giant “duty free” shopping area that takes up most of the airport building, or walk around aimlessly in circles trying to find a place to sit. Alternatively, you can go upstairs, show your transit ticket to the next place, get a meal voucher and wait in line for a fairly mediocre “dinner” in a crowded fast-food type place, followed by jostling for a place to sit in their overcrowded café. And that’s the only dining option.

Once you are done with this so-called dinner, you go back to option #2: cruise the tiny waiting area trying to find a seat. At this point you are fighting against an army of people from the Asian continent who’ve been dealing with overcrowding and lack of personal space their entire life, so you stand no chance. If you try to be clever and pay your way into a first-class lounge (hey, it’s only $25!) you’d be disappointed. Apparently, “paid peasant access” is only available after 11:30pm – which in my case translated into 2 hours of waiting to get in. So no such luck. Only other option is to try and find a place to sit on the floor, as far away from the not-so-hermetically sealed smoking lounge as possible, and read a book.

So what’s the point of this rant? Ah yes, Doha (and Qatar airways) should triple the size of the airport, and put more chairs in. Another point? Don’t fly through Doha. Or get rip-roaring drunk on the first leg of your flight – I think that’s what the Nepalis coming from Kathmdandu on the way back were trying to accomplish