{"id":3000,"date":"2014-06-16T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=3000"},"modified":"2014-06-16T05:40:53","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T12:40:53","slug":"nepal-postscript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=3000","title":{"rendered":"Nepal Postscript"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2014-06-02<\/a>

Annapurna South<\/p><\/div>\n

As you can probably tell, I love to travel, and part of what make travel so enjoyable is coming home. I am now home at last, with a head full of incredible memories of awe-inspiring mountains, the lakeside, tourist town of Pukhara, the humid, elephant-filled jungle lowlands of Chitwan National Park and the teeming city of Kathmandu.<\/p>\n

\"Kunmig<\/a>

The Modern Kunming Airport<\/p><\/div>\n

I don\u2019t know if I believe the slogan, \u201cGetting there is half the fun\u201d, but I can tell you this, getting home is a pain in the ass . . . literally! For us, it clearly won the battle of \u2018the one bad day\u2019 . . . or two. We were picked up at our hotel in Kathmandu at 1:30 on Friday afternoon (That\u2019s around midnight on Thursday back on the left coast) for a 4:30 flight from Kathmandu to Kunming, China. We arrived there around 7:30 p.m. and had to pick up our checked baggage, as it could not be sent directly from Kathmandu to Los Angeles. Unfortunately our connecting flight to Shanghai, China wasn\u2019t until 8:00 the next morning, so we had \u2018a few\u2019 hours to kill at the airport \u2013 like all night! We thought about going to a nearby hotel, but then decided we\u2019d just tough it out and hang at the airport. After we wandered through all the shops, eateries and restrooms, we cozied up to an airport bench with our backpacks and luggage and tried, in vain, to get some sleep. The next morning we departed at 8:00 and arrived in a very smoggy Shanghai around 11:00 a.m. We then had about two hours to kill before departing for Los Angeles at 1:00 p.m. After an 11 hour flight, we arrived in LA at 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning. I don\u2019t think Patrick is going to let me book anymore of his flights.<\/p>\n

For those keeping score at home, that’s crossing through 11 time zone and the International Date Line for a total of 36 hours from start to finish! Now that I\u2019m in the comforts of my own home, I like to say that it wasn\u2019t that bad \u2013 but it actually was.<\/p>\n

\"2014-06-04<\/a>

Those Damn Stone Steps<\/p><\/div>\n

I think the message was clear from the blogs posted over the last two weeks that our favorite part of the trip was our time spent in the Himalayas \u2013 the scenery, the people, our time with Dom and Kirin and that feeling of exhaustion at the end of the day that was only relieved by a hot shower and a cold beer.<\/p>\n

Each time I posted over the last two weeks, a Jimmy Buffett lyric echoed in my head and helped me realize why I love to travel and write:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ever wonder why you ride this carrousel,<\/em><\/p>\n

You do it for the stories you can tell\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

So thank you Jimmy and thank you to all who followed us on our adventure and particularly those who took the time to comment on the blog \u2013 it\u2019s always good to hear from home. I did try to respond to them all, but our schedule and connectivity issues wouldn\u2019t allow, but I did read, and sincerely appreciated every one.<\/p>\n

Thanks to sister Suzanne, who I’m sure edited and cleaned up my posts and kept me abreast of what was going on back home.<\/p>\n

Thank you to Patrick, for taking two weeks off work to join me \u2013 I couldn\u2019t have had a better trekking and travel companion. We spent 24\/7 x 2 together and we\u2019re still friends . . . I think.<\/p>\n

\"Jimmy\"<\/a>

Inspired by Jimmy Buffett<\/p><\/div>\n

My biggest THANK YOU goes to my wonderful wife, Linda, who surprised me with this amazing trip for my 70th<\/sup> birthday. I have to admit that Kathmandu was not on my rather extensive \u2018Bucket List\u2019, but it turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime. I love you Linda and you cannot know how much this trip meant to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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As you can probably tell, I love to travel, and part of what make travel so enjoyable is coming home. I am now home at last, with a head full of incredible memories of awe-inspiring mountains, the lakeside, tourist town … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[813],"tags":[1466,1478,1512,1251,1513,1515,1252,1469,1514],"class_list":["post-3000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-chitwan-national-park","tag-himalayas","tag-jimmy-buffett","tag-kathmandu","tag-kunming-airport","tag-los-angeles","tag-nepal","tag-pokhara","tag-shanghai"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/2014-06-02-17.47.19.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-Mo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3000"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3010,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000\/revisions\/3010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}