going, leaving him, them, behind. How could I do it and not feel guilty? Most of all, I was afraid to grow old with Mal and not have the intertwined memories of journeys shared.
The craving was like an abyss – bottomless, dark, huge and frustrating to try to get over. When cyberspace fell into my black hole, my obsession spiralled and every waking moment revolved around roaming. Possessed, I scoured the fledgling travel sites, ‘stalking’ other travellers, vicariously living through their stories.
One day there was an earth tremor and the rock moved. Maybe it was because the house was filling up with guidebooks or my addiction with travel websites into the wee hours was ruining things on the romance front. More likely it was my cone of silence that had settled upon the household as I stewed more and more on the extended working hours Mal was undertaking and the role of lone cheerleader parent I had found myself in. I felt like a single mum but in reality was a laundress-cum-short-order-cook to the invisible man. The bubbling sulphur of anger exploded and instead of suggestions to pack a backpack, the threat of packing cases and moving boxes loomed. An agreement of a holiday somewhere safe, secure, and easy was reached and, before he could change his mind, I’d whipped us onto the cheapest flight I could find and whisked us all off to gently stumble around Bali.
We returned home joyous. Work hadn’t collapsed with Mal away, the rugrat didn’t get lost, trampled, or squashed (although, he did get us picked up by a vanload of prostitutes outside of Denpasar, but we won’t mention that to The Crepehangers) and I had a stamp in my virginal passport, now in its second edition. Mal was keen to try somewhere further afield and for a little bit longer. One stipulation – nothing too demanding.
Skirting the mountains, our plane dips through layers of thin cloud. Directly outside our window, dry terraced fields clinging to precipitous slopes come into view. Holding my breath in fear and fascination at such landscape being so high and close, I gasp as I catch a glimpse of a farmer and oxen ploughing a field, followed by mud huts dotting the terraces. Sebastian crushingly grips my hand, sending a sharp pain up my arm. I pat his hand feebly in a gesture of reassurance. Shit, I hate flying! Kathmandu appears – muted, dull, and sprawling.
With a sharp thump, the plane touches down and coasts along a tarmac that feels as if it’s full of rocks and potholes. One look at the airport terminal and I’m not surprised at its roughness.
‘Mum, it’s just a pile of rubble!’ exclaims Sebastian, peering out the window at what represents Nepal’s Tribhuvan International air terminal. ‘It’s all fallen down.’
He’s right. It’s hard to tell if the terminal is under construction or it’s in complete dilapidation.
Armed soldiers appear. Stationed everywhere, some are standing, others walking. They all have very large guns. Four wait at the bottom of the rollaway stairs as we disembark, herding us into a rickety bus missing most of its windowpanes and seat padding. There isn’t enough room for everyone and some of the passengers must go back up the stairway where they are told to wait until the bus returns.
I sit down on the hard timber seat and look around. The terminal entrance is only metres away from us and I cannot see another opening. ‘Where do you think they’re taking us?’ I ask Mal.
‘Buggered if I know,’ is his reply.
‘Hey dad, are those real guns?’ whispers Sebastian. He stares wide-eyed at a soldier standing near the bus.
‘Yeah, but they’re not gonna do much with them. Antiques, point three-o-threes, probably from the Second World War.’
We drive towards the rear of the plane and catch sight of soldiers frisking two tiny sari-clad women holding household vacuum cleaners and a mop – the cleaning staff. Having reached the plane’s tail the bus does a complete U-turn and takes us back the way we came, past the soldiers who are now inspecting the vacuum cleaners, past waiting passengers crowded on the stairway watching us with amusement, and past the nose of the plane which now has a man waving what looks like a stick of incense at it. The bus stops at the terminal’s entrance and the driver motions at us to disembark.
‘Welcome, entry, you go,’ he says with a smile and points to a long dark corridor. I’m both surprised and delighted the driver speaks English. I’d been wondering if English was spoken in Nepal. Among the three of us, we know one Nepali word – Namaste, hello.
As we enter the corridor, two girls in front of us stop and one pulls out a camera. However, before she can get the cap off the lens, a soldier brandishing his rather ancient but lethal-looking weapon runs over and pulls the camera away. He sternly waves us all into a windowless, dimly lit tunnel.
The presence of soldiers lurking in the shadows gives an ominous atmosphere to the terminal as we line up to pass through customs. It becomes a long wait and everyone is subdued. Further down there seems to be a problem with someone’s papers and a fast, furious conversation in hushed tones is taking place. Suddenly a loud thud echoes out. Mal and I both jump, then laugh nervously, realising the thump is only the stamping of a passport. We had built ourselves up to be ready for a colourful, noisy arrival, perhaps with a few touts offering their services. Khaki and guns were the last thing we expected. After all, aren’t we supposed to be in a land of peace, love and happiness?
It turns out, two months prior on Christmas Eve, an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked at Tribhuvan Airport. The hijackers brazenly disembarked from one plane, walked across the tarmac, and boarded an Indian Airlines flight awaiting departure. One hundred and seventy-eight passengers and eleven crew members were held hostage for eight days and taken on a bizarre ‘holiday’, flying to India, Pakistan and around parts of the Middle East before finally landing in Afghanistan. Well I suppose, that’s one way of getting a stamp into your passport. In light of the hijacking, Nepal upgraded security at the airport; hence, the heavy presence of soldiers and a bus tour of the tarmac.
Once through customs, we securely clip on our backpacks and step out of the terminal into blinding sunlight, a swirl of dust and the waiting throng of yelling, grabbing, and demanding taxi touts and porters. Now this was more like it. Anticipated chaos! However right now we don’t need any of them. Instead, we’re to meet two friends in the airport departure lounge, due to fly back to Australia.
Looking for a quick escape from the touts, we make a dash towards two large glass doors between the departure and arrival terminals and almost crash through the glass panes. They’re locked tight. Mal pushes the doors again and the glass wobbles. A guard steps forward and points us towards the car park, at the same time shaking his head as if to say, ‘Dopey tourist’.
‘Want to go in there,’ I say, pointing at the doors. Through them, I can see a calm orderly room with people quietly waiting in line. The guard points towards the noisy jostling hordes.
‘Can’t we go through here?’ I ask. The guard remains unmoved, hand politely directed outwards. Reluctantly we walk out to the car park area and into the touts’ waiting arms. They are aggressive. We brush off their grappling as we steadfastly push through, heading towards ‘Departures’. Realising we are going ‘the wrong way’, the touts yell even louder and try to stop us by standing directly in front of us.
‘You go wrong way, sirs, madam. This way,’ a tout shouts and grabs Sebastian’s backpack. ‘I take,’ he adds, pulling the pack and dragging Sebastian backwards towards a car.
‘Hey, let go… Muuuummm!’ he calls, a hint of fear in his voice. I spin around, grasp his hands and begin a tug-of-war with the tout. I win.
We run towards the departure doors, they chase us. Once inside we watch them
