A Trip of Lifetime ( Part 1)

-Pramod Aryal

It was the 31st of January 2005. That was the day I began my extraordinary journey to Antarctica. My first leg of journey started on 11th of January that is when I left Adelaide for the trip to Kathmandu with my wife. We got to Kathmandu on 12th and I spent most of my time attending wedding ceremonies and catching up with relatives till the day I left for my trip of the life time.

After saying heartfelt goodbye to my family, my flight left Kathmandu bound for London at 2pm on 31st of January. There was exhausting 6 hours transit in Bangkok which I found very hard to spend. After total of 22 hours of flight and roaming in transit lounge in Bangkok, I finally arrived Heathrow airport. My brother-in-law caught me up at airport and we went to his house. A news also broke through that King of Nepal had taken over the country by sacking the cabinet and the phone line was cut off and airport was shut down. If I was a day late, I would have missed out my trip of the life time.

After having a delicious meal prepared by my cousin Deepty, I left their house to make my way to Brize Norton Airport near Oxford. I took trains and the taxi to get to the RAF base. By this time I was very tired. I had trouble waking up while waiting in transit lounge for the flight. Eventually I boarded the aircraft and we were on the way to Falkland Islands. After 8 hours of flight we stopped at Ascension Island at the middle of Atlantic Ocean. I must admit Ascension Island was the ugliest place that I have ever been. There were neither trees nor grass. There were only gravelled hills and land. After 2 hours of transit, we were on the way to Falkland Islands. When we arrived at the Islands, there was very high wind. Aircraft was literally rocking when it was stand still. The ground crew struggle to unload baggage. My first impression of Falkland was the feel of being middle of nowhere. There was grass land extended as far as I could see. It was cold and windy. I did not see any tree. I caught a bus to get to Stanley the capital of Falkland Islands. Bus ride took 45 mins to get to Stanley. Stanley was a small village by the side of the Harbour along side a hill. It is small but had a taste. My hotel room was awesome with the view of harbour. I was extremely tired by the time I got to Stanley after very long journey from Kathmandu and went to bed with plans to explore Stanley a day after.


The FalkLands Island Information Centre

Next morning, started my day with greasy English breakfast. I always wonder how English can eat such a greasy breakfast everyday. For me it was a change. I loved it. After all I was getting sick of the food in planes. Stanley didn’t have much to offer other than its harbour view. It was windy almost everyday. There were a couple of grocery stores, a bank, a post office and few gift shops. For next 6 days or so I just wondered through the streets up and down the hilly road, stroll around the gifts shop. Upland Goose hotel where I was staying was pleasant with harbour views. I spent most of the time there doing work in my computer. Actually first three days I had double bedded room with en-suite bathroom with harbour view from the window. It was lovely room. Unfortunately after 3 days I had to move to average twin room. On 6th of February Wayne Hocking from Canada arrived in Falkland. Wayne was our company’s co-partner. He was accompanying me for the trip to Antarctica.

He came from LansChile flight through Santiago. Lucky him he travels in Canadian passport. I also had my flight setup in last minute to fly through Santiago. There was an overnight stay in Santiago. It would have been great since I had not been there before. Unfortunately Nepalese passport is not very popular in the world and I could not get visa in time. As a result flight plan changed to UK Falkland on RAF flight.

( To Be Continued)
To go to next part(part 2) of travel logueclick here