Flights

may 21-23

To start, I believe we skipped the 22nd as a day in its entirety, so that is why this entry applies to several days. I have spent the past 2 days traveling to get to Kathmandu, Nepal. I started the trip by flying from KC to LAX, where I waited several hours until I continued on to Guangzhou, China with my friend Nick. The flight to China was quite an experience. We boarded the 15 hour flight anticipating to be out of our comfort zones, but a broken AC system in the plane is not quite what we meant. After the flight was delayed an hour for the sauna-like temperatures, we, along with the hundreds of other people on the huge double-decker plane took off for China. Thankfully I was able to sleep for a couple hours of the flight, otherwise our time was spent playing random children's games on the in flight system and watching Shrek. I'm still appalled that there was no wifi on any of my flights, but that was likely for the best. Another interesting occurrence on Chinese Southern Airways was the meal situation. We were served "dinner" immediately after our flight departed (so 4 AM Kansas time), which consisted of rice, fruit, and other basic staples. We had "breakfast" right before the flight ended as well. After a lengthy de-boarding process, we rushed to our connecting flight in Guangzhou to Kathmandu, which was also with China Southern. This second flight seemed much more normal, was significantly less full, and much shorter (5 hours) than our previous flight. We landed with a view of the Himalayan mountain range, and after pointing out several different peaks I thought could be Everest, I gave up on guessing. Overall, these flights definitely taught me that I should probably learn Chinese, or at least conversationally, in addition to English for general travel and communication purposes. I also realized that international traveling is less scary than I anticipated, while certain parts may have been slightly stressful. As I write this entry on the last hour of our final flight, I am very excited to be done traveling for a while and to start learning about the culture and views of sustainability in Nepal. From what I have gathered from previous research on sustainability in the region, primary obstacles are poverty, population, and development. However, Nepal has a unique culture and opportunity to create a sustainable community system. I am excited to observe where these possibilities could take hold.