This entry, whilst marked in Beijing, actually covers multiple flights via Beijing, Chengdu and Lhasa, for transit purposes only. This was so lengthy that it deserved an entry all of it's own.

It was a pretty terrible 24 hours of travel . We'd expected getting to Nepal to be difficult, and had had our hand forced to book outbound flights before arriving in Japan. There were no direct flights. Flights with one change were expensive and took a day and a half. The ones we selected we knew were no good, but decided to go with it anyway.

The plan was to fly from Kansai airport, near Osaka, to Beijing. Then from Beijing to Chengdu. Then from Chengdu to Kathmandu. This would take a whole day but then it would be done. What happened was we turned up in good time at Kansai airport, and that was lucky because our flights were so confusing, that it took 3 checking-in people 40 minutes to work them out. They had a rule book out for whether we needed a Chinese visa or not. They asked us lots of questions about visas for Nepal and our next destination as well, which had nothing to do with them. It turned out that our last flight stopped in Lhasa, so it would actually take us four flights to reach Kathmandu . And on top of that, we had to clear immigration and customs and collect our luggage at each airport. At least they had vegetarian meals booked for us. (So we thought.)

The first flight to Beijing was on a huge and packed plane, complete with crying sick baby behind us. It passed pretty quickly as we had films to watch on the plane's entertainment system. We had a vegetarian meal which was as good as airplane food ever gets. On arriving into Beijing, we had to clear immigration. We walked into the arrival hall and a huge mass of people trying to get through. After a couple of minutes we spotted a small booth which said '72 hour visa free' and thought we'd give it a go. We joined the queue and presently reached the front, only to be told to go and fill out a form that we'd missed because of the mass of people. This done, we rejoined the queue, passed through immigraton with a 24 hour visa-free pass, and went through customs to collect our bags. We put our bags straight back in to get them into our next plane, cleared security and the pat downs again, and waited for our next flight in the departure lounge .  

Unfortunately, we had no Chinese Yuan to spend, so were limited to places which would accept credit cards so that we could drink coffee and eat cr*p food. We found a terrible internet connection and read articles on the BBC news (no Facebook in China). It may or may not have been coincidental that we couldn't load any news articles about China...

The flight to Chengdu was not so quick. We were tired, and the vegetarian meal didn't exist. The cabin crew told us that we hadn't booked one (not so) and eventually presented us with a bread roll with a piece of limp lettuce and unidentified pink goo. Ken ate both rolls. We were put in the middle of the rows of the plane, despite there being plenty of seats available in front of us. We found it impossible to nap, which was unfortunate, and eventually landed in Chengdu.

When we arrived into Chengdu, went through the usual palaver of collecting bags, and the found that there was no information on what was where. Our flight tickets didn't say which terminal to go to, but eventually we found a map which told us to go to terminal 1 for international flights. We found terminal 1 after being sent the wrong way by staff in the airport, and it was a kilometre walk away. We didn't reach terminal 1 until midnight, and saw no hotels 'by the hour' advertised, so resigned ourselves to sleeping in the airport . We found some metal benches inside, and complete with our luggage, tried to get some sleep. We were partially successful, until it gradually got lighter and more busy until we woke up to people basically sitting on our feet, at 4.30am. There was not much sleep to be had.

Check in was supposed to be open at 5.10am, but didn't open until 6.30am. We passed through security, to find that there was nothing on the other side - no shops or places we could buy coffee or anything. We read and rested, and attempted to sleep.

The flight to Lhasa was lengthy. The entertainment system was rubbish, but at least we got a vegetarian breakfast served. There was never enough coffee for us in our tired state. We were told to get off the plane at Lhasa to clear immigration, which was news to us. As soon as we exited the plane we guessed we were at altitude, by the temperature being 4 degrees celcius and the overwhelming dizzy feeling we experienced (we later found out that the airport stands at 3570 metres). We cleared immigration with no problems, didn't collect our baggage as apparently we didn't need to, but we did have to get another boarding card, and another physical pat down. Lhasa seemed military-esque and had the most expensive coffee, ever.

An hour later, we were sat back in same seats on the same plane, and were finally on way to Kathmandu. We passed over some beautiful mountain ranges. A stewardess pointed out what she said was the second highest mountain in the Everest range. The snow covered peaks in the distance were amazing. At long last, we were due to arrive into Kathmandu!