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Nepali Times ईspecial 20 October 2024

Dear Nepali Times Readers,

Hope your Dasain was fun, and you are bracing yourself for the next round of festivities. If you were travelling, you would have experienced the huge rush at Nepal’s only functioning international airport.

Well, we have bad news and good news for you. The bad news is that from 8 November till 31 March next year, Kathmandu airport will be more congested than abnormal because of upgrading work on the parallel taxiway.

Tribhuvan (means ‘Third World’ in Sanskrit) International Airport has consistently been voted the third worst airport in the world by CNN. My question is: why isn’t it Number 1?

After all, we have tried our level best to maintain the sloppiest and most expensive ground handling in the world, the longest immigration line for its own country’s  nationals, and the security check staff are nominated the rudest in the X-ray Men Category.

Lately, arriving and dear departing passengers will have noticed that the Tinkune International Airport (TIA) has made a serious effort to ensure that Nepal maintains its image as an ‘adventure destination’ with improvements from the moment you land after circling for two hours, till the time your flight to Lukla is cancelled for the third day.

Arriving tourists are thrown off the deep end with the visa-on-arrival process which is kept deliberately convoluted to test their emotional maturity, IQ, survival skills and patience. If they successfully negotiate the e-visa line, the visa payment line, the wrong immigration line, the metal-free gold smuggler detection line, the baggage carousel wait, the queue to have their baggage tag verified, and then the elevator line without blowing a gasket or two, then they are welcome to Naturally Nepal, where Guest is God and Once Is Not Enough.

This week’s most read story online is reporter Vishad Raj Onta’s alert about congestion at Kathmandu airport for the next five months because of a partial reduction in night flights to facilitate construction. Read the story and post your comments here: Kathmandu airport to cut flight hours.

So, what is the good news? With the airport upgrade, Kathmandu Airport can double the number of landings and take offs from April next year. This means the two hours your plane is on a holding pattern will be cut to one hour. The other good news is that CNN also voted Nepal as the top must-see destination for 2024. Yay.

If you are in Nepal now, and have wondered about air quality, below is the NASA FIRMS satellite image taken on 19 October showing pollution and stubble burning in Pakistan and India that the prevailing wind is blowing up to the Himalaya.

Alert readers will have noticed that Nepali Times online has not covered the arrest of former Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane this week on charges of scamming depositors of multiple cooperatives. That is because: who knows WTF is really going on? And what else is new?

We will be back on Friday, 25 October with the next print edition. See you then.

Kunda Dixit