Friday 27th December

We are travelling for the first time with a group.  Usually, we prefer to travel independently but an advertisement for Nepal, together with an interesting itinerary whet our appetite.

After informing our good friends and often travel buddies, Pete and Anne of our plans, I’m pleased to say they decided to join us.

As we live in Crete, it is a Greek company that we have booked the tour with.  A Greek guide, Melina, will accompany us on our travels and return with us to Athens.  There are a total of 26 people in the group and the company has advised that it is not a relaxing or restful holiday, well, that’s fine by us!

At the appropriate time, we met Melina at Athens airport and she issued us with our tickets, an updated itinerary and a completed visa application.  She also wrapped a suitcase belt strap with the name of the company on it around every  suitcase, so all the group’s luggage would be easily recognisable.

Melina advised us that unfortunately we had a delay of 45 minutes; therefore we would only have 45 minutes to make our connection in Istanbul.

Our suitcases were tagged with a red ‘Quick Transfer’ label and our fingers were crossed.

Well, regrettably the delay turned into almost 3 hours. When we arrived in Istanbul, we were greeted with the news that we had indeed missed our connection to Kathmandu and we were issued with new boarding cards for the 01.25 flight on the 29th December (24 hours later).

Melina quickly arranged a hotel and transport with the airline, Turkish Airways; the luggage would stay at the airport.  So Dave and I only had the clothes we were wearing, plus our camera case and a rucksack with a book, my journal etc plus thankfully a couple of toothbrushes, toothpaste and deodorant!

Our guide had organised a Viber group a couple of days before our travel date.  One of the pieces of advice she gave us was to carry a small cabin case with a couple of changes of clothes, but we decided, in our wisdom, that we didn’t need to!

It was just before 5am when we arrived at the hotel, we set our alarm for four hours later.  Melina had informed us that she would arrange something in Istanbul for us for later that day.

 

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