Terminal

We arrived in Nepal at the small airport in Kathmandu. You can get a visa on arrival there, so that is what our plan was. It seemed easier to get it there then to go to the Nepal Embassy and wait in line. You have to pay 25USD for the visa. They don’t accept Nepal Rupees or Indian Rupees. We had enough dollars for three of us, but we were traveling with a friend, so there were four of us. And actually, the dollars were hers. So there is an ATM at the immigrations area for travelers that don’t have dollars. You are able to withdrawal Nepal Rupees and then step two steps over to the money changer and exchange them for dollars. No problem. Or so we thought. The problem was that the ATM wasn’t working. The lady before us got 9,000 rupees. She had asked for 10,000. So I guess the ATM ran out of money.

The money exchange will take Indian Rupees, but not the 500 or 1000 notes. We didn’t have enough 100 notes to make 25USD, so we can up with plan B. Plan B was for two of us to go out and find an ATM. We were told there were more in the airport. The officials said we would be allowed back in, no problem. So the two of us, Susie and I, went out, collected our bags, and got outside. I stayed inside the airport while Susie went in search of the ATMs. She found three, all of which were not working. She came back with the sad news. So we gathered up all our Indian Rupees and some left over Nepal Rupees from Susie’s last trip to Nepal, and our last 16 USD. I went back in to the immigrations area and went to the money changer. He took pity on me and allowed me to give him a combination of money and gave me the rest of the money we needed.

This all reminded us of the movie Terminal, where the guy gets stuck in the airport. We wondered how it would be for Steve to be stuck in the immigrations area for a couple of days. Not too fun for him. There are no restaurants and no TVs and basically nothing to do. So thankfully he was able to leave the airport and enjoy the rest of Kathmandu.