MinnesotaMel

Stranded in the "ugliest place on earth"

In March I had an opportunity to act as a control office for the Ambassador’s trip to Pokhara, a city about 150 km northwest of Kathmandu. The trip was interesting, with many chances to chat with various business and government leaders and learn quite a bit about US policy in Nepal (which I do not interact with on a day-to-day basis in my job). After two solid days of meetings and events, I actually got the Ambassador to the airport a bit early, so he and his bodyguard took an earlier flight back to Kathmandu. There were only two seats available, so I stayed with my colleague Jamie to catch our original flight back. The time for our flight came and went. Nothing happened. We found that due to bad storms the flight had been cancelled. We got rebooked on the flight next day and thought “how lucky the Ambassador was to leave when he did.” Only later did we find that his flight, because of the storms, had been rerouted to a place that the Lonely Planet describes as “Perhaps the ugliest place on the planet”. Poor man.

posted by MinnesotaMel @ 10:19 PM