So pretty much anyone reading this will know that I am married to someone from Nepal. Her name is from Kalpana and she’s been living in the United States for five and a half years. And during that time she’s been unable to go back to Nepal to visit her family. Well, she finally got her green card this past summer (2019) and for the first time in so long she was able to visit her family.

Kalpana and I have been married since August of 2016 and this was the first time I was able to meet her family in person. Conversations through Facebook messenger aren’t quite the same as being in person. Also, her parents don’t really speak English. Her dad is self taught, and does a pretty good job communicating, but still, not easy to have a real conversation. The younger generation in Nepal is surprisingly good at speaking English, so that did help.

Anyway, this is a quick recap of our trip, from my perspective, and i’ll try to include some interesting info while i’m at it. So let’s get right to it.

Day 1+ – Traveling to Nepal

Traveling to Nepal is pretty tiring. And expensive. We bought our tickets about 5 months in advance on Qatar airways and they were $1500 a piece, round trip. The flight out there was scheduled for around 27 hours and the flight back was around 37 hours. I was pretty excited though, because this was my first time outside of the country since being in Argentina for my church mission. I got back from that in 2002. So it had been a while – 17 years to be exact.

The actual flight time was about 21 hours in a 27 hour period. We flew from SLC to NYC to Doha (Qatar) to Kathmandu. The last flight was pretty tough for me because my bum hurt and I was extremely tired (we left at midnight on our first flight and i barely slept the whole way…maybe a couple hours). My leg started to twitch involuntarily and then strange thoughts of DVT (deep vein thrombosis) started to make me paranoid. A similar thing happened on the flight back, but maybe i’ll address that later.

I was extremely happy to finally be in Nepal, but flying into the country I could already see differences. Here is a picture from the airplane:

The airport isn’t like what we’re used to in the United States. For example, there was no jetway from the airplane to the terminal. You actually deplane and walk up to the airport. Here’s a video of us walking up to the airport:

Going through the immigration process wasn’t too bad. I had to get a visa at the airport. There was no need to do it ahead of time. It was $30 for me to get a 15 day visa. It only took a few minutes. When we went to get our bags after that it was a bit chaotic. Just like at any entrance into a country, they have the right to search our bags. However, there was this guy who worked there who could tell we were traveling from the United States and he was like “come, I’ll help you” and helped us get our bags and walked us out of the airport, no doubt expecting a tip in dollars but Kalpana gave him Indian Rupees instead…lol It was pretty funny, but we were so worried about having issues with customs and in the end we were through in like 45 seconds. We brought hundreds of dollars worth of gifts back to Nepal for Kalpana’s family so we were really happy not to have any problems. Here’s a picture from outside of the airport with some of Kalpana’s family that came to see us:

Traffic in Kathmandu is pretty crazy. This is where you’ll see the most cars and buses. A lot of the cars are used to help transport people around, so they aren’t strictly for personal use. We got into this little micro-van and traveled from the airport to Kalpana’s Aunt’s house. Here is a video from inside the little van, on the way from the airport:

We were so tired when we got there, but were happy to be in Nepal. The first night was just spending a little bit of time with her family. I got left with two of her cousins, Bishal and Bikash, who I had kind of spoken to some online and on video chat. But it was a bit different when we actually got to talk in person. I wasn’t even sure what to say! Their English was good though so it wasn’t terrible. Since electronics are super expensive in Nepal, we were able to bring a laptop for Bishal and the family just paid us back. It was a lot cheaper doing that than trying to buy something comparable in Nepal. I hope he’s liking it!

Beds in Nepal aren’t quite the same as here. Mattresses are standard in the U.S. but in Nepal they aren’t. I liked to describe it as sleeping on a soft piece of wood. My back would ache sometimes in the morning. But that first night I didn’t notice it too much because i was so tired. Here are a couple pictures of the bed and room we stayed in on the first night. You can see the thickness of the material that was on the bed. Not what i’m used to…

We went to bed early that night because we were exhausted and we also had to get up early the next morning to catch a bus from Kathmandu to Chitwan where Kalpana’s parents live. Since this post is already pretty long I’ll stop it here and share the next couple days in a new post. I hope you’ve found this interesting so far!