After a sleepless night and lots of tears the next morning we’ve decided to head back to Kathmandu before cutoff.
We’re carrying enough cash to cover our month up here, maybe a little more, but we’re still 10 days walk from the nearest ATM and who knows if cash is going to get scarce. There are too many unknowns for us and at least in a city we have access to an ATM, regular access to food and we plan to find a big enough apartment in Kathmandu or maybe Pokhara for the five of us to spread out in if we end up in full lockdown.
All morning small domestic planes run overtime ferrying travellers back to the capital as people react to the news of the imminent partial lockdown. Our lovely host clearly tells us she thinks we’re better off staying up in the mountains than the city, and it’s tempting, but we’ve made the decision. I struggle to stop crying.
Jules and Kris have made the decision they’re in it for the long haul and they’re going to carry on until they can’t anymore. As we pack and make final arrangements the little boys spend a special morning together playing, singing and being ‘working mens’ as they cart bits of wood and stone around alongside Kunsang, just generally living that beautiful outdoor life that we won’t have back in Kathmandu. After Tom’s happiness to have his little buddy back it already feels heart wrenching that we’re taking him away from this. Eventually it’s time to say goodbye and it’s a few tears all round. Not including the amazingly resilient kids.
A hideous 12 hour Jeep ride back that’s already fraught with tension sees Tom vomiting almost the whole way. On our arrival back to Kathmandu we realise just how much has changed in a handful of days. Thamel is eerie, quiet and deserted. On the way down I’d made some enquires with another family currently in Pokhara and it sounds like it’s starting to head the same way. Businesses closing, everyone disappearing from the streets. All of a sudden finding accommodation close to the airport for the first opportunity to head out feels like the best option.
The next morning in the space of an hour we’ve spoken to our guesthouse owner but he has no information except that we should get an apartment, stock up on two weeks worth of groceries and plan to sit tight for the unknown, his connections amount to nothing as he tries to get a travel agent help us with arranging flights out. The government has caused chaos with this last minute announcement to shut down outgoing flights. We pack our bags with urgency and arrange an Air BNB and call for a taxi. The last flights are leaving Nepal today and apparently for love nor money are we going to get seats for five, but I suggest we head to the airport on the way to see if we can do anything on the ground anyway. Everything feels urgent. As always men with guns roam everywhere and they’re screening everyone on entry to the airport, and though they shouldn’t let us in without a ticket, once again our NZ passports are currency. It’s a tense minute when on taking everyone’s temperature they first think Max has a fever and ask him to sit aside but he’s soon allowed to join us.
Scanning the departures board the next flight out is via Singapore. This transit option isn’t closed yet to New Zealanders (it will be in 48 hours). It hadn’t occurred to me there are no ticket counters at Kathmandu airport, so with seemingly no other options we join the check in queue to try and enquire about availability. After a long wait they make it clear that due to a flight cancellation the day before, not even all those holding tickets are going to make it on the flight. This kicks off three hours of running in and out to offices of the different airlines housed in a separate building as along with many others we seek help and advice, not much is forthcoming. While all the major airlines have offices there, buying a ticket at the airport is apparently an impossibility and they direct us to (closed) ticketing offices or phone lines that go unanswered.
We set the kids up with a movie in a quiet corner and in conjunction with looking for help the ground we’re simultaneously searching online and end up finding tickets with Qatar Airways that supposedly leave on Tuesday. Confusion reigns as today Sunday is meant to be the final day before all flights are shutdown for a likely-to-be-extended 12 day period. It seems an expensive gamble to take but what are the options. We spend a painful amount of money, but count ourselves lucky it’s not the $50,000 flights I found on another date.
At this point we’re both familiar faces at the offices of the remaining three airlines flying out today, as we tag team heading to the building next door that houses the airline offices, while one stays with the boys. On my fourth trip to the Qatar Airways office trying to verify if they have any inside knowledge on whether that Tuesday flight will have clearance they have some potential good news; Qatar Airways are pushing the Nepali government to bring a plane over tonight which will fly out at 10.20pm, they’re currently waiting on permission. If it goes ahead there are seats for us all. He gives me a number to call (me and the rest of the world) to change our booking if it does go ahead. By the time I get back to Mark & the boys, who are completely unfazed by this latest iteration, the flight is already on the departures board. But no matter how hard we try the Qatar Airways call centre is at capacity and it feels like no chance of me making it through to a real human. The main problem is the flight doesn’t show on the Qatar Airways website, if it did we could just change it online.
A fortuitous conversation with the girl next to us tells us that though she couldn’t book the flight online, it only shows up if you’re searching from outside Nepal, she grabbed a ticket through family booking it from the UK. This maddening piece of news offers a chance and an hour later we have Mark’s brother and sister in law on the phone, and within twenty minutes they’ve found the flight and changed the booking online for us. Sweet relief. We’re flying out tonight.
Mark rustles up some extortionately priced, no doubt ineffective face masks and we settle in at the airport for another six hours or so. It won’t feel real until we’re sitting on the plane. We have a one hour transit time in Doha to catch the second leg to Auckland which we know will be tight but at check-in they reassure us it will be fine. I don’t even care, I know it’ll either work out or not and at worst our journey out of this crazy frantically unravelling situation has begun. En route we realise we’re heading straight from Nepal’s partial lockdown into a full level 4 lockdown that’s just been announced for NZ the day after we’re scheduled to arrive. We don’t yet have a home, there’s a lot to organise.
The tight transit window of course is not fine. The plane gets away late. On arrival in Doha it pulls up miles away from the terminal and we empty out onto a bus and take what feels like the scenic route. The world’s longest runway bus trip, we’re the only thing moving amongst what feels like hundreds of parked planes and it’s so strange. When we finally make it into the airport our flight has, of course, departed.
Eventually they tell us they’ve booked us on a flight leaving in a few hours via Sydney. It doesn’t feel good as the last we had heard Australia had closed transit even to New Zealanders. He assures us this must have changed recently and we figure even if it hasn’t once we’ve made it that far what are they going to do. We arrived at Kathmandu airport about 20 hours ago at this point, no one slept on the first flight, it must be about 4am our time and everyone is starting to lose it. Tom wants to play on the multitude of big play areas in Doha airport. We’re wandering this huge almost empty airport in this Black Mirror-esque alternate reality where Corona dominates every screen in sight, we’re surrounded by people in masks, frantically reapplying hand sanitiser (we’re also the people in masks frantically reapplying hand sanitiser).
It feels like if we’re going to pick up Covid anywhere it’s from the kids play equipment, but eventually we relent and Tom spends an hour of happiness and somewhat normality.
The next flight is 14 hours and the boys are so tired from their previous marathon movie watching sessions they all sleep. Tom so soundly for 10 hours or so. Too soundly we realise he doesn’t even wake up to wee, but we have a change of clothes and we’re almost home. In the wait in Qatar we have managed to make arrangements for a place to self-isolate, given that at this point we have no home to come back to. Friends and family all rallied to make this rapid return as functional and welcoming as possible. My head is still spinning. 48 hours prior we were up in the Everest mountains. A week before that we were floating every day in the island paradise of the Maldives and three weeks before that we were finishing up our three months in India. It doesn’t feel real.
Our re-entry to NZ is premature and strange, so quiet, less masks then the rest of the world, but medical staff who query how we’re feeling, thankfully we can say we’re not symptomatic and have made arrangements to quarantine while we wait to find out if we’ve picked anything up on the long journey home.
We’re soon jumping in the car that’s been left at the airport for us and head for the Coromandel, could there be a more beautiful place to self-isolate. Via text I’d made some quick arrangements with mum to sort out groceries to tide us over as we’re confined to home for the first 14 days. We made a plan to meet halfway. A bizarre reunion, we meet on the side of the highway, the boys wave from the car and we stay two metres apart as she unloads groceries for us out of the boot of her car, then steps away, as we load it into ours. Then say goodbye, for just the next month? Who knows.
