Thamel
Thamel
A beautiful carved door in Thamel
Strike day and airport confusion!
This was the day that we were scheduled to leave Kathmandu and fly to Kunming, China and then on to Shanghai the following day, where we were planning on spending 1 night. After Kathy spent most of the previous evening and morning worrying about getting to the airport during a strike we found out that it was a very small strike and even though the volume was very light the essential vehicles were being allowed on the road. In Nepal different groups can call a Bandh, or strike to protest certain governmental issues. Depending on who calls the strike the entire country can come to a stand still as no vehicles are allowed on the road, if the police enforces the strike. This time it was 3 student unions protesting the recent increase in petrol prices and by the morning 2 or the groups had withdrawn. We later heard that several busses and cars had been torched by the protesters, but we did not have any problems getting to the airport, or back to the hotel.
When we checked in for our flight on China Eastern we were informed that we could not spend a night in Shanghai, as our original entry into China was through Kunming and we were only allowed 24 hours in the country. I was sure that Ruby, the airline representative was wrong as I have read many times that China allows a 72 hour stay if the passenger is in transit, but not wanting to be deported back to Kathmandu we had not choice but to change our tickets for the following day. This cost us $150, cash, per ticket to change and a lot of stress as they could not give us a receipt nor issue a new print out of our ticket. We left the airport and headed back to the Yak & Yeti Hotel and then on to enjoy the afternoon in a traffic free downtown Kathmandu. We did a little more shopping and Rene took some nice pictures that on a normal day would be impossible in Thamel.