3rd February 2017

Our final early wake-up of the trip, and sadly, it meant a return to the rain, gales, and cold of the UK. We had freshened up and dressed by 6:15 am and made our way down to reception, where we picked up a packed breakfast, kindly provided by the hotel. Soon, our guide and driver arrived, quickly followed by Pat and Chris, who were also on the same flight home.

The journey to the airport was much quicker than our trip to Everest the previous week. After checking in and before navigating immigration and security, we found some seats, filled in the necessary immigration forms, and ate our breakfast: apple, banana, boiled egg, a sweet bread thing, and mango juice.

Things went smoothly at first, though of course, I had to split from Sue and join different queues during our transit through the system. As many male Nepalese were returning to work in Oman, I found myself in long lines of shuffling men, while Sue sailed through with no queue at all. She waited patiently for me to reach the final checkpoint for a last check of my boarding card, but I was stopped. Somehow, I was missing a stamp.

Naturally, it was the first desk where the error occurred, which meant trekking all the way back through the building to present my card to the official who had failed to stamp it. He knew what he’d done, smiled, and stamped it without a word. I made my way back through the lines of shuffling gentlemen, casting a frustrated glance at the idle officials on the female side. The Nepalese are very obedient, though they do have their moments.

Once, we were told, in a demonstration against the government, they destroyed all but 9 of the 3,900 traffic lights in the city. Of course, this didn’t help traffic flow, increase road safety, or reduce air pollution, and ironically, it probably shortened the culprit’s life expectancy. A bit of an own goal. Perhaps they accept the absurdity of repetitive boarding card stamping and male queuing, fearing that any change could cause planes to fall from the sky!

The second time around, I was reunited with Sue, and we made our way to departures, finding two seats next to our fellow travellers. The flight left very late, and with another tight connection in Muscat, it seemed we might miss our connecting flight.

We landed at Heathrow around 6:30 pm, where we spent ages waiting for our bags to appear on the belt. After departing from arrivals, we discovered that we hadn’t disembarked at Terminal 3, but at Terminal 4. Awkwardly, Oman Air had relocated its operations in our absence.

We then had to catch a bus to Terminal 5 and take the Hoppa Bus to our hotel, as it didn’t run from Terminal 4. We stood for what felt like half an hour in the freezing cold at each stop, waiting for the buses. Then it began to rain.

Eventually, we completed the unwanted two legs of our journey. Before driving home to Harborough, we enjoyed two warming hot chocolates in the hotel where our car was parked. We arrived home very tired,  just before midnight.