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Day -1/15 : Reaching Kathmandu

Date: 8/5/2025

We started quite a bit early from Shyams home. We reached the airport by noon and surprisingly we were done with the for.aloties by 1:30 ish.
At this point we had about 3 hours to kill before the boarding.
I spent this time roaming around the airport and then heading to the lounge at the Delhi airport as I was very hungry. Disappointingly the food In the lunge was not decent so I needed up eating a bit and some coffee. I also sent some emails and spoke to a friend. That was fun. Looking at Shyam im starting to get used to the idea of working from my phone. It's actually not that bad.
After this I headed to the gate hoping to board the plane, but sadly the flight was delayed by almost an hour. This was really frustrating. Shyam had booked his seats specifically so that he would get a decent view of Mt. Everest which sadly didn't happen because of this delay.
The flight was okay for me. It was a widebody which somehow excited me. The in-flight entertainment was not working., but the views were good and I was able to charge my phone. What more does a man need.
We landed in KTM at around 8 and I was very excited from the start. Everything felt magical. From the immigration counter (my first international travel), to the baggage collection area. It was extremely fun.
Post landing, we got our NCell sim cards, which were promptly activated. I have coverage for 28 days.
I didn't have to withdraw any money as Sonam did that and we paid for the cabs etc with that.
The cab ride was interesting. Our hotel is right in the middle of thamel and as soon as the cab pulled into the streets I could see rows and rows of shops selling climbing gear. I felt like I was in heaven.
You could find everything from first-copy clothing to high quality used gear for very competitive prices. The only catch is that you should have an eye for spotting a good jacket, and you should have an eye for spotting a good deal.
We reached the hotel and performed the duties. Post that we promptly headed out for dinner; it was almost 10pm and most of the local shops were closing. We had dinner at a corner thukpa shop. It was nice. We decided to walk around and explore somf of the streets. Now we could actually walk into the stores and ask for prices and stuff. This was much more fun and exciting. I was making a note of shops that had good gear/things that I might be interested in buying.
By this time another friend of mine (Niranjan) was arriving (his flight was also late), so we decided to head back. We were also pretty tired.
The rest of the night was quite uneventful. Niranjan arrived and we all settled down. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, we were meeting our guide and we would also have to get the money exchanged.