My Travel Adventures

Once again, we began the day early, eating our breakfast at quarter past six. Our guide had decided to frontload the itinerary, as the weather forecast was predicting heavy rains to begin at three in the afternoon. We travelled northwards, therefore, to the scenic town of Punakha, Bhutan’s erewhile capital.

I imagine I would have passed a pleasant night in Thimphu, as it was warm under the covers and cold above them, but I made some bad choices yesterday whose consequences caught up with me by around half past four in the morning. There is a dish in Bhutan called ema datshi, which is traditionally made of chilli peppers, onions, and a liquid form of yak cheese. It is delicious, but the unusual combination took my stomach completely by surprise, and I spent the rest of the day dealing with the consequences at various pit stops.

We woke up at 5:30 in the morning for a quick breakfast at the hotel, after which we took a shuttle to the airport. We made our flight with plenty of time to spare; check-in was scheduled for 7:55, but not much started happening until half an hour later. That being the case, I was shocked that the plane took off just around ten minutes later than expected.

As our tour group was supposed to arrive some time before noon, my dad and I made a trip to the more modern, eastern part of central Kathmandu in the morning. We walked to the Narayanhiti Palace (which does not open until 10:30 on most days), after which we headed south to the Clock Tower and the Jame Masjid. Despite no longer housing a royal family, the palace receives heavy armed protection nowadays, which is ironic considering it witnessed one of the most shocking massacres in modern Nepali history when the king was still in office.

I will not dwell much on day 0 of this adventure: my dad and I left Prague on a Sunday afternoon, transferred in Istanbul, and touched down in Kathmandu shortly after dawn on Monday. There were two highlights to the journey. First, we found all the alcohol at Istanbul Airport had labels warning customers of a three-litre purchasing limit – but these were, hilariously, only in Russian. The second highlight was seeing the sun rise over the Himalayas. There was also a lowlight: we encountered strong turbulence on our flight from Istanbul to Kathmandu. As I am sure is true for many people, this was an opportunity for me to revisit most of the religious hymns I know.

Britain’s never-ending railway strikes and skyrocketing public transport prices have radically changed my trip-planning calculus. Journeys to relatively nearby places have become so expensive that it is often cheaper to simply rent a car – especially when travelling with another person.