Well, that was not the easiest relocation ever. We arranged the driver we have been using the last few airport trips and he was early once again. He is a fast driver and it can get a little exciting as he darts through the traffic (today he even got in a shouting match with another driver), but for whatever reason, it’s just worked to schedule our airport rides with him. We arrived at the airport around 10:45am. This was our planned itinerary – fly from Ulaanbaatar to Hohhot, China with two hours there to connect to a flight to Chengdu, China; stay overnight in Chengdu and then fly to Kathmandu on Wednesday morning. That is not the itinerary we flew.

I did a lot of research to see what requirements we needed to meet to fly through China because we do not have a Chinese VISA. There are several airports in China (Chengdu is one of them) where you are allowed to be in the country for 24-hours for the purposes of transiting through the country.

When we got to the Air China check-in counter, we were informed that we would not be able to board the plane because there is not a transit area in the Hohhot airport – meaning we would have to leave the secured area and then re-enter to catch our next flight. Hohhot is not one of the airports that allows the 24-hour entry without a VISA and I am surprised Air China allowed this kind of booking on their web site without any kind of indicator that a VISA may be required.

I checked Google Flights quickly to see if there was any other routing to Kathmandu with a departure on Tuesday and found that a Korean Airlines flight was leaving around the same time as our Air China flight was scheduled to leave. We hustled over to their desk to inquire about buying tickets with them and they found tickets but said we might be able to buy them online a little cheaper than buying right at the desk. They were right – we were able to save around $60 each by buying them online. I had some concerns about passport control because of the confusing messages about registering when you first enter Mongolia. No reason to be concerned. Our Mongolian immigration officer was one of the friendliest I’ve ever met. He was interested in our time spent here and I even showed him a video of the waterfall that was my favorite spot in the country. We then headed to Seoul for the night. The flight left on time at 1pm and arrived around 5pm given the one-hour time change forward.

We cleared passport control and customs in Seoul and then went in search of the Air China desk to inquire about a refund for our original flights. Their office was in a different terminal and a very nice young man who works at the Incheon airport helped us navigate the bus to the other terminal and find the office. They weren’t able to help but gave us contact information for the help center and then we got back on the bus to our hotel – the Best Western Premier Hotel at Incheon Airport. Upon arrival, I worked online and also called the Air China number to get the process started for our refund. Fingers crossed we can recover some of those charges. It’s warmer here than I expected – temperature around 90 and very humid. Feels like Florida. We went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner – we both had a seafood pasta and Cass Beer (local to South Korea). The pasta was very good, the beer was fine – a pretty light tasting lager. And that was the first day of travel.

Wednesday, we got up, checked out, and caught the bus around 10am back over to our terminal. The check-in process was very easy with Korean Air and then we quickly passed through security and went to the Korean Air Lounge close to our gate to get something to eat. Our flight left on time – around 2pm Korea time and the flight was a little more than six hours long to Kathmandu so we arrived around 5pm Kathmandu time. It was pretty cloudy coming in so there weren’t any great views of the Himalayas. Processing the VISA on-arrival was a little frustrating because I had already applied and when I did so, I was asked to enter Sandy’s information. I wasn’t sure if she needed to also apply since they now already had her information and I sent an email to ask, but never received a response. Of course, we got to the counter and she in fact did need to apply, so we had to go back out of line, apply, and get back in line. Minor inconvenience – maybe cost us 25 minutes or so.

We then got a taxi to our apartment and checked in. After getting settled into our new home – an apartment in the Bhatbhateni neighborhood, we walked over to a nice outdoor restaurant called Paradise Garden and had a delicious chicken biryani. It’s pretty cool to be in Kathmandu.