A Brief Return to Bangladesh · by Michael McCarthy

I’d enjoyed a lovely two weeks in Nepal, if you ignore the people killed in the bus crash on the highway to Pokhara, and had forgotten all about my adventures getting to Kathmandu via glorious Biman Airways (the flight didn’t crash, so what does anything else matter?) when I received an email from my travel agent in Bangkok regarding my return flight. I was staying at the Magnificent View Hotel in Kathmandu, conveniently located just outside the Thamel tourist district and next to a vacant lot where homeless squatters begged for rupees in the frigid winter air and pariah dogs practiced their barking. The Magnificent View was aptly named, for most of the neighbourhood laundry could be seen simply by standing on the roof and looking any direction, although the Himalayas for which the hotel was supposedly named were lost in a deep murk of cloud and pollution. The hotel was celebrating its official grand opening with a discount rate of $15 for the finer suites – those with barking - along with an unofficial cessation of any heat. Everyday the staff greeted the cold dawn of late November by throwing open the hotel’s front doors, a traditional gesture of hospitality I assumed but one which caused something of a frigid breeze in the lobby where the computers were located, and so it was necessary to wear a winter coat and gloves to check one’s email.

The View charged its clients computer time by the minute in order to make up for its rather modest room rates, and despite the fact that a chat in cyberspace cost more than a full breakfast I checked my email every morning to see if the Maoists were blowing up anything that might affect me, like the airport. On the day before my departure it was with some surprise that I received a brief but urgent message from Charlie Company, my travel agency in Bangkok, informing me that my return flight back to Bangkok was “cancelled.” Note; the email didn’t say “postponed” or “re-scheduled,” as one might expect in a country as remote and unpredictable as Nepal, but the more formal word “cancelled.” I emailed Charlie Company back, requesting details. It was new to me in the course of my global travels that an airline could take you to the country of your destination, especially one as remote as Nepal, and then simply leave you there to find your way home. I had assumed that they had a legal, if not ethical, responsibility to take you back to the place where you had boarded the plane, although with Biman Air (aka “the world’s worst airline”) this apparently was not the case.

“Please check with Biman Air and tell me when my flight will leave,” I emailed Charlie Company in Bangkok.

“Please check with the Biman Air office in Kathmandu,” came the counter reply.

There was the small matter of finding out where Biman Air’s offices were located in Kathmandu. There are not, as far as I know, any phone books in Nepal and my Nepali is poor when it comes to things other than ordering refreshments. Charlie Company suggested the airport would be a fine place to start looking, so I paid a taxi 400 rupees to take me there, a small fee given that any drive in Kathmandu may destroy the vehicle forever. There is always a mob of taxi drivers desperate for fares waiting outside the Kathmandu airport, so I assumed my return drive back to the city centre would not be a problem. Unfortunately, there was a queue a mile long just to get inside the airport, a security necessity given that the Maoists were keen to blow the airport up. As a westerner I knew that things like queues didn’t affect me, so I strode manfully straight to the front of the endless line, where I understood that a rifle pointed at your face means the same thing to everyone in any language, so I returned to the taxi stand to reflect on my options.

Upon questioning of passersby – there are at least several people who speak English in Nepal, although taxi drivers are seldom among them – I was directed to the adjacent cargo building, where after a very long search I stumbled across a door with the name Biman Air on it. I opened it and came to face to face with a very astonished man sitting behind a desk, who leaped to his feet at my entrance. This, as it turned out, was both the freight and lost luggage office, and a very impressive mountain of lost luggage took up most of the room, testifying to Biman Air’s excellence in this facet of their affairs. As far as I could ascertain, this was the first time in Biman Air’s long and glorious history that a passenger had made his or her way to the freight office, which was in fact Biman Air’s only permanent presence at the airport because they did not boast a permanent booth in the main terminal.

Communications proved difficult, because the only words in Nepali I know were “taxi” and “beer,” but the freight agent soon deduced by my facial expression that I was not a person to be trifled with (perhaps it was my refusal to leave as well) and he phoned what turned out to be his supervisor, conveniently located at the official Biman Air offices in downtown Kathmandu, perhaps a 5 minute walk from the Royal Palace and my room at the Magnificent View Hotel. This airline official spoke English with an accent best translated with a heavy spoon or tuning fork, but I deduced that I needed to come to the Biman Air office in downtown Kathmandu, in person should I wish to expedite matters, especially any transportation issues that required me to obtain a seat on its one and only aircraft outta town.

I walked outside to flag a cab and found to my amusement that, unlike the few hundred cabbies that sit there all day to snag any westerners that manage to survive customs with their wallets intact, there was not a single cab in sight. Happily my Biman Air translator phoned for one, and gave the driver explicit directions to the Biman Air offices downtown, so it was no surprise to me that the taxi driver could not even find the Royal Palace. However, after several visits to Nepal I knew the ropes, so I commanded him to leave me and the cab parked in the middle of the street – a fairly normal maneuver in Kathmandu, because this way nobody will steal your car while the driver is gone - and to go inquire at the nearest shop for directions, which of course caused an immediate and horrendous traffic jam with appropriate honking of horns, so he was back in a jiffy.

Inside the Biman Air offices there was a TB epidemic in full sway, but after going straight to the front of the line as befitted my position as an affronted western tourist with appropriate formal grievances and speaking in a calm but clear voice, I was directed upstairs to the formal offices of the General Manager of the entire airline. To my surprise (one should never be surprised at anything in a place as crazy as Nepal, but this was such a shock to see in a business run by Muslim Bangladeshis) I found that the general manager of Biman’s Air’s Kathmandu office was a person of the female persuasion. Not only that but she was sporting what I usually refer to as “the complete bedsheet,” being fully enveloped in a black garment larger than the shroud of Turin which covered her head to toe.

On the manager’s desk stood two ancient rotary dial telephones that she held in each hand, and a cellphone she balanced between her ear and her chin. There was also a 1980s’era computer that I half-suspected to be hand cranked, where a static screen displayed the kind of K-Mart software last seen in North America during the Nixon administration. This computer, I soon learned, contained the names of all the 300 or so people who had been bounced off the aircraft by the sudden “cancellation” of our return flight.

“I am sorry,” she said, “but today we are not having the electricity. Computer is not working.”

This explained her use of three telephones simultaneously. As far as I could ascertain, she was talking to both Dhaka and Bangkok at the same time, with – I think – Mecca being the third party, waiting on her cellphone for instructions. She smiled and indicated that I should sit and signaled for my ticket, which I produced. I sat and waited. Her conversations, in at least three languages, continued for quite some time. I waited.

“Very busy today,” she finally said. “It is Hajj, you know.”

“Sorry?” I replied. “The what?”

“The Hajj. Many pilgrims going to Mecca. We had to send the plane.”

“Excuse me? You sent my plane to Mecca? The one that is supposed to fly everyone back to Bangkok?”

“Yes, but we can get another plane,” she said, picking up another phone.

“When?” I replied loudly, because it seemed our conversation was fading away.

“Next week,” she said, “maybe the week after, but the plane next week is full.”

“Next week?” I exclaimed. “I can’t stay in Nepal another week.”

“But you are tourist,’ she said absentmindedly, making notes on a piece of paper as she talked on the phone. “You can enjoy.”

With bombs going off all over the country and death facing you any time you got inside any vehicle on any road I felt I her argument about relaxation was somewhat obtuse, but it occurred to me that items such as time, patience, costs, schedules and inconvenience have different meanings in different cultures. So I waited.

“Sorry,” I said, as she switched phones, “but I have a connecting flight from Bangkok to Cambodia tomorrow, and it’s a one-time ticket that is valid only on that exact day, and if I miss that flight I am in big trouble, because it will cost me far more money to buy a new ticket, and I am sure that this is not a cost that Biman Air wants to pay.”

“We can get you other flight to Dhaka,” she said, “but not on Biman Air. That flight is also completely full. I must remove a passenger, and you must stay overnight in Dhaka. Please show me your ticket.”

The thought of having to fly an airline other than illustrious Biman Air caused me great consternation, and I let my feelings show on my face as I handed over my Air Asia ticket to Phnom Penh to prove my story. “As long as I make my connecting flight, that’s all that matters.”

I was up early at the Magnificent View the next morning, taking in the fresh air in the lobby, rubbing my hands together briskly so I could type and making a mental note to bring a warmer coat on my next trip. The taxi arrived early, and it was very early when I arrived at the airport, but as it turned out that precaution was necessary given the huge crowds. There was no mention of my flight on the arrival and departures notice board, which was broken anyway, and the public address system was also broken, and I couldn’t hear a word any of the airline people yelled out from the gate, so it was only pure luck that I discovered to my horror that my departing flight was actually already on the tarmac and preparing to take off.

This was the first and only time in my global travels I have ever known an aircraft to leave well ahead of schedule, but I made a mad rush to the plane and the stewardess let me board with only a mild lecture. The door closed as I sank into my seat and scrambled to do up my seatbelt while thanking the gods for my luck while inhaling the reek of week-old curry. It was only when I finally relaxed and looked around that I realized the plane was mostly empty.