31 MARCH 2023 FRIDAY - LEAVING MUMBAI FOR KHATMANDU
Friday the 31st of March 2023 dawned. At my household the activity in the kitchen started much much earlier as compared to a normal Friday. I had requested my better half to pack Idlis for me. We had planned that I carry along some home made food that could sustain me atleast till I reach Khatmandu. 4 Sets of 4 idlis soaked thoroughly in molagapodi mixed in Til Oil and packed in aluminium foil, which in turn was placed in self sealing covers.
The Indigo flight 6E 115 was scheduled to take off at 1140 AM from Terminal 2 of CSMT Mumbai. We reached the airport by 830/845 AM. We faced a minor confusion when checking in the baggage. Both Sridhar & myself had one big trekking bag each to be checked in & one backpack to be taken into the aircraft as hand / cabin luggage. Sridhar could not keep his trek pole inside the bag. He did not want to carry it in hand and make it part of his cabin luggage either. The airline staff were extra helpful & some how accommodated the stick by securing it to the check in bag. The printed boarding pass handed over to us had 3 nos check in luggage tag stickers affixed to it. 2 main luggages but 3 stickers. I saw the airline official affixing the third sticker to the trekking pole.
After completing the security clearance & the immigration formalities, Sridhar & myself settled down to enjoy our home made idlis. (Co)Incidentally Sridhar had also brought the exact idli set which I had carried with me! We relished the idlis in the T2 airport surrounding. Idli is never complete unless you have atleast half a cup of piping hot coffee over it. So a visit to Starbucks and a cup of latte followed. The words from our ancient Upanishads - Annam Parabrahma swarupam - involuntarily came to my lips..
After satiating our stomach & taste buds, we roamed around the T2 lazily looking up the stores.. and finally headed to the boarding gates. When walking through the passenger boarding bridge just before entering the aircraft a smartly groomed official with a viboothi applied smiling face checked our boarding passes. Correctly guessing him to be a Tamilian I exchanged pleasantries with him in my mother tongue Tamil, to which he replied courteously but happily. We took our allotted seats, luckily both aisle seats. Announcements started, but the aircraft did not move. Shortly our smiling faced Tamilian official entered the aircraft and headed straight towards Sridhar & myself. He wanted to check our boarding passes, especially the luggage tag stickers. He confirmed the total number of check in luggages we had deposited at the counter & queried about the extra third sticker. When we mentioned that the third sticker was probably on account of Sridhar's trekking pole, he looked visibly relieved. It seems the airline were physically counting the bag & stick as a single luggage whereas the electronic records / number of stickers issued showed one extra for the pole, which was being physically counted as part of the main trekking bag!
Confusion sorted out the aircraft took off and we reached Khatmandu as per schedule. After immigration we collected our luggage & on the way out purchased a local NCell SIM card each. The INR / Nepali Rupee conversion was Nepali Rs 16 to INR 10. I have heard senior trekkers and others who have visited Nepal often mentioning that exchanging Indian currency in Nepal is never an issue. But high denomination notes are normally not accepted. So my travel currency bundle comprised of only INR 100 Rs & I did not bother to get it converted to Nepali currency.The local SIM card with 5 GB of 4G data costs around Nepali Rs 500. We took a local cab & reached the Hotel Capital Boutique where we had booked our overnight stay.
After freshening up and another round of Idli, Sridhar & myself hired a local cab & left for Pashupatinath temple, probably the largest & most popular Hindu temple in Nepal. The temple was located at a drive of around 25 minutes from the hotel. It was raining slightly & the climate was chilly when we reached the temple. The temple was quite empty and we got good darshan. Sridhar recited an anuvagam from Sri Rudram and we prayed sincerely for the success of our trek.
The room where we had to spend the night had gas stove, vessels, microwave, refrigerator etc. We went for a small stroll in the streets of Thamel (locality in Khatmandu where our hotel was situated). We got a good feeling of the area and purchased a couple of instant coffee satchets, half a litre of cow milk for the next day morning's coffee and some curd from a local diary. Dinner was made up of completing our stock of Idlis & opening the Thepla pack which Sridhar had brought along.
Comments
Post a Comment