When my last post left off, we were stranded in Doha, Qatar in the Middle East. I never imagined we would be there that long. We spent four long nights anxiously waiting for the Kathmandu airport to reopen so that we could get a flight. I do have to say that although it was annoying, we did have it pretty good. We were in a beautiful city staying for free in 5 star hotel with free food. Thousands upon thousands of people were stranded at airports across Asia, some without food. Most of the budget airlines didn't compensate their customers because the shutdown was not their fault, luckily Qatar Airways did.
Our time in Qatar would have been a lot more enjoyable if we knew we would be there for that long. Instead, every 4-6 hours we would be provided with another update, usually something along the lines of, "You could be getting a call anytime for a flight, please stay in your room. We should know by 6pm." Nearly every time we asked the concierge what there was to do in the area, they would say that we are not allowed out of the hotel on the off chance we got a flight. After a few days of that we decided to break out. We always waited until we were sure that there would be no flight for the next few hours then head out.
I cannot explain in words how beautiful of a city/culture Doha was! There was so much to do, so much to see, and the people were so nice! The concierge who gave us directions assured us that "My city is much safer than any of your cities." I am sure he was right. I was shocked at how many people spoke English. The hardest things to get used to were the stares, and the honking. They honked for everything: driving too slow, too fast, to let someone know they were there, etc. After a while we realized that they were also honking at us when we walked by, and there were a lot of whispers/staring that were clearly about us. I guess that's what we get for 3 American girls walking down the streets in the Middle East.
We went to the Souq Waqif which is a huge outdoor market. It looks like the buildings have been there for hundreds/thousands of years but we were told that it is new. It was built for tourists to look old. Even though it was a tourist trap, it was still packed with locals. We walked around to the different shops and tried some different dessert/pastries. We had one that was amazing! It was a thin dough filled with Nutella. We watched so many people order before we figured out what it was/how to ask for what we want. It tasted so good :)
While stuck at the hotel, we met so many people who were in the same boat we were. It was easy to tell who they were; we just looked for the people who wore the same thing every day because WE WEREN'T ALLOWED TO GET OUR CHECKED LUGGAGE! Luckily I had a few spare outfits, but so many other people weren't in the same boat.
For those who haven't heard the story of the crashed plane/Nepal being cut off from the rest of the world hear it is:
We heard so many conflicting stories about the crash. Apparently it was that pilots first time flying into Kathmandu, which is a very difficult landing. You have to dodge mountains and endless amounts of fog and deal with limited radar with many black spots. The pilot was circling for a while until some of the fog cleared, then once he was cleared to land he began to then aborted the landing. When he came down again, nobody had told him/he didn't see the dense fog rolling in and missed the runway. He landed partway on the taxi lane and partway on the runway. For the three days in Kathmandu before the crash, there had been torrential downpours which made the runway extremely slippery. He was not able to stop and the plane skidded for nearly a kilometer before coming to a stop in the grass. Without the grass, the plane might not have stopped, but because of the wet grass, the heavy plane sunk down into the mud. The entire country of Nepal did not have a crane. They lacked the equipment necessary to move the plane, and the plane was not blocking the only international runway in the entire country. Luckily India's airforce had a special plane that could land on a shortened runway and they delivered the equipment and the engineers. Even after the engineers arrived, it still took days!. Once the plane was dug out and lifted from the grass, they still couldn't move it. It was going a few meters at a time. It finally was fixed and then we just had to wait for a flight.
At 11pm Doha time, so about 3pm Saturday in NY, I get a call from the front desk saying that I have a flight and I need to report to the lobby now. I said I'll be down in a few minutes and they said, "No, now, we are leaving." My clothes are all over the room and I have never packed that fast in my life. Nothing was going to stop me from getting on that flight. I rush downstairs to check out, and then sit in the lobby for 15 minutes because apparently we weren't in as much of a rush as we thought. Once at the airport we all go to check in and get our boarding passes where we come to find out that there is no flight! We wait and we wait then we all get our boarding passes. Have the people waiting were on one flight at 4:30am and the other half (my half) on the 8:10 flight. They made us get to the airport 9 hours before our scheduled flight. We spent the night awake, pissed off and stressed out at the airport waiting for the food court to open. It finally opened at 5 am and we had some burgers for breakfast...the airline gave us food vouchers for the inconvenience. I would have rather had the sleep. Our flight got delayed another hour and a half before we finally boarded our crowded flight filled with antsy, smelly, sleep deprived passengers who have been trying for days to get to Nepal.
The flight was only 4 hours,with an additional 1.5 hours circling over the airport before we could land. We were 6th in line to land, there were 3 planes in line for gates already on the ground, and every gate was filled. As you can imagine it took forever to land, unload, and go through immigration. I had a middle seat in the middle section of seats but was still able to see out the window a little. When we landed we went right past the crashed plane. I can totally see how that happened. This airport is indescribable. It took us two hours in immigration, which I thought would be the hard part. We then walked through an unmanned medal detector, the only screening to get into the country. As soon as we walked into baggage claim, chaos ensued.
It can’t be described properly with words. There were mounds of suitcases, and mobs of people none of whom were at all patient. People had been searching for the bags for hours. I watched my flights carousel for nearly 2 hours with no luck. At this point I had been awake for over 40 hours, could barely stand. It was not an easy task to even see the carousel with so many people. After two hours we realized we could leave and come back in so we did. We found our ride, gave him our carry-ons then headed back in with the aid of our program directors good friend, a customs agent. He took our bag tags and went into the back to find them before they went on the carousel but he wasn't able to. Apparently there were still 6 trucks full of suitcases waiting to be unloaded. He said it would be better to come back in the morning. We were looking forward to getting our bags so much, but at that point only sleep was on our mind. Danielle and I had been on the same flight, because we were on the same original flight.
The whole baggage claim area looked like this. It just got worse over the next few days. It took me 4 days before I got one of my bags.
When we got to the car, we were told that Diana’s flight was about to land so the driver took us back to the house and the guy who picked us up waited for Diana. We got back to the house at about 10:30 pm after 6 long days of traveling. I pretty much went right to bed but didn’t sleep well. Diana was supposed to be coming home and she was my roommate. She never came. I got up and looked so many times when I heard a car but there was nothing. In the morning we found out that she never came out of baggage claim/wasn’t on the flight/or got a hotel because the guy from our program waited until 4:30 am and never saw her. We were very concerned. We started getting ready to go back to the airport to collect our bags/look for Diana because Danielle and I were the only ones able to go back to baggage claim. You needed a checked bag receipt to get in. There was no wifi at the airport and we tried calling Diana using the regular service but it went straight to voicemail.
After a thorough and chaotic search, we concluded that Diana was not in baggage claim. We then got a call from the program director Anish who said that he contacted Diana’s mother to ask if she had heard from her and Diana’s mom said that Diana said she was at the house. We were very concerned at this point because she was not at the house, nor had she ever been. I checked my phone and had a facebook message from Diana, but it was actually from her mom asking us if we knew anything. Finally, Diana emailed Anish and he had her call him on a local phone. We found out which hostel she was in and set off to go get her. When we got close to the hostel, we called the number again and were told that she was waiting “by the big tree.” One of the ELI employees, Santosh, and I set off on foot to find the big tree. We asked about five different people and walked about a mile until we found it. We found the tree but no Diana. We started looking in every business for her thinking maybe she went to find Wifi. Luckily she did, she emailed Anish again and he told her to go back to the tree. We found her! Finally!
When we were at baggage claim, I was only able to find my big bag, and not the little one. I checked in every pile and it simply was not there. Luckily everything in that other bag was replaceable.
Diana said that she got her bag around midnight and left baggage claim, there were so many people trying to get her to take a taxi and she finally saw a guy holding a sign that said Diana. In her sleep deprived state she didn’t ask any more questions. She didn’t realize until the morning that the hostel she was in was nothing like the pictures she had seen of ours. It could have been a lot worse but luckily she just had a nice sleep in a quiet little hostel. We got back to the house around 1pm, showered and ventured out for lunch and to exchange our money. It was a chaotic experience but we are finally here!