Laos to Nepal - Airports, Delays, and Slumber zones

Eli and I excitedly left Vientiane, Laos for our flight to Kathmandu, Nepal. Being the savvy travellers that we are, of course, we didn't buy a non-stop flight. In fact, we purchased separate tickets from Laos to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and then from Kuala Lumpur to Kathmandu (with a layover in Mumbai, India along the way). 2 different airlines in 2 days to get to a country that with a non-stop flight, could have only been 3 hrs away. We saved about $300 in doing this...is it worth it? First leg of the trip started smooth enough. We arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and sailed through customs and we did not need to buy any entry visas for the country. We had about 5 hrs to kill before our next flight on a completely different airline. My instinct told me to go check into our next flight before we found lunch, which turned out to be a wise move. We looked and looked for our ticket counter with no avail. After a while I went to the information desk to inquire and the nice lady wrapped in her traditional Muslim headscarf smiled and told me I was in the wrong airport. After I stuttered, "excuse me" she told me that I needed to catch a bus to a different airport that was about 20 minutes away. I had her write down the precise directions for us in our little black book and I swiftly walked over to Eli exclaiming "we are in the wrong airport!" That is a traveller's worst nightmare, but luckily, we had time to spare and soon on the bus to the correct airport. Once we arrived, we quickly devoured some Burger King (yum...burgers tasted so good after all that rice and noodles), and waited for our flight from Kuala Lumpur to Mumbai. We arrived in India around 12 midnight with hopes to catch some sleep in the airport before our next flight to Kathmandu at 8am the next morning. When we arrived in India, we were a bit disoriented from the previous flight so we found ourselves walking around like zombies. We didn't get too far before we were asked to show our boarding passes for the next flight and our Indian visas. I lackadaisically told security "Umm, we don't yet have boarding passes and we don't have Indian visas because we are not staying in India, we are sleeping in the airport for the night." Looking back at this statement, it sounds pretty naive, however, it turns out that this was not all that uncommon for travels "in transit" to other countries. Everyone at the airport seemed to look out for us that night. We were escorted 2 different times through security, we were given a handful of candy to eat, and we were given temporary transit passes which meant we were confined to the airport and were forbade from leaving a secured area. Fine by us, we just wanted to sleep! We were told to meet back at a coffee stand at 5 am to be escorted back through security to get our boarding passes. By this time, it was 1:30 am so we found a corner in the airport with benches that was actually labeled the "slumber zone." There was only one bench left so I took it and Eli blew up his air mattress and pulled out his sleeping bag. I got a kick out of watching passerbys watching Eli. They had never seen such a sleeping device come out of a little backpack! Eli seemed to fall asleep quickly whereas I was too distracted by the group of 5 Indian men spooning on the benches laughing and listening to traditional music on their cell phones. I wanted to yell at them "can't you read the sign...it says slumber zone" but of course I didn't. I must have fallen asleep at some point because at around 3 am, I was being shaken awake by airport personnel. I had no idea where I was and it took a full minute for Eli and I to understand what was going on. She told us that we needed to go to a new area immediately as our escort was getting off of work and there wasn't anyone else to help us. Eli struggled to release the air from his mattress while we were following our escort back through the airport to a new holding area. Again, Eli was getting all kinds of weird looks so I pretended like I didn't know who he was. We got to our new area with only about 1-2 hrs of semi-sleep so we are anxious to get on a quick flight to Kathmandu. Our flight went smooth until we were about to land. We were watching our TV screens with the miniature plane and we noticed that the line on the tv map showed our plane going in circles. Hmm, we wondered. Sure enough, on the speaker the Captain's voice said "due to fog we cannot land and we are diverting BACK TO INDIA!" Eli and I shrugged, pulled out our jackets to use as pillows and tried to get some shuteye. We landed in India again, and we ended up sitting on the runway for 5 hrs before the fog lifted. We finally made it to Kathmandu, about 8 hrs behind schedule, so happy that our bags didn't get lost in the shuffle. At the airport we were greeted with a mob of taxi's and tour guides. I eagerly accepted the help of one guide who rushed us into his friend's taxi. We told the taxi driver to take us to a cheap hotel in the center city. The night we arrived in Kathmandu happened to be on the sacred holiday of Shiva Ratri, a celebration of the Hindu God Shiva. The locals celebrated by gathering up all the wood they could find to build massive bonfires throughout the city. It was quite the site to see, especially after no sleep and a little jetlag. We were happy to be in Nepal but we knew we wanted to get out into the mountains sooner than later so we met with a tour agent that same night to schedule our trek. As crazy as it sounds, we booked a plane ticket to Lukla for 6:30am the following morning! Lukla was where we were to start our trek and the only way to get there was by a 35 minute plane ride or by a 7 day walk. Yes back to the airport! We filled our bellies with some traditional Nepali food of Dal Bhat (rice and lentils) and Veggie MoMos (veggie filled dumplings) and got a solid 6 hrs of sleep before heading off for our next flight and the start of our trek. We thought for sure our airport luck would be golden but when we arrived to the airport, once again, the fog was too heavy so we were delayed. We waited in the freezing cold domestic airport drinking warm "milk tea" for about 5 hrs until finally, we boarded and took off towards Lukla. Finally, Eli and I were about to see the Himalayas, and the previous days of airport chaos quickly vanished. Our faces stayed pressed against the windows of the 14 passenger plane so we could take in the amazing views of the mountains the whole way. We spotted the Lukla airport, if you could call it that. It was more like a building with a piece of airstrip on the side of the mountain. I thought, no way are we landing there. Oh yes we did.