On Nepal Time

I haven't yet left Japan but I'm already living on Nepal time.

My flight from Osaka to Kathmandu has been delayed by 12 hours, so the staff at ANA (which handles Royal Nepal's ground services) herded all of us onto a bus and shuttled us to the nearby Washington Hotel. Imagine two bus loads of tourists arriving at the hotel just as guests are also arriving for a wedding.

If all goes according to schedule, we will arrive early morning, perhaps around 7:00am, which is in many ways preferable to arriving after dark. If we arrive early enough, I may even be able to get to the school for my first day of class.

Surprisingly, I'm not at all put out. I've got two months, so what's a few hours. Our delay has given me the chance to meet and have lunch with a Japanese Buddhist monk and a freelance Alpine photographer off to the Himalaya's to shoot film for a television documentary. Good fortune often comes in packages of inconvenience.

#