SUNDAY: We fly back to Kathmandu (eventually).

 My phone rang and awakened me at 2 AM in Pokhara. It was Albuquerque oral surgeon Travis Rudd, who I knew was enroute to Kathmandu to spend a week here as an HVO volunteer. The plan was that a car from Dhulikhel Hospital would pick up the three of us (Travis, Leslie and me) at the Kathmandu airport, since our arrival times were similar. But somehow we miscommunicated Travis's arrival time, and he was at the KTM airport at 2 AM with no one there to meet him. We had a brief phone conversation, and he was resourceful enough to get a taxi to the Dhulikhel Lodge Resort. Feeling somewhat guilty about his predicament, I went back to sleep.

I woke up feeling better -- having slept for most of the prior 36 hours. I no longer had chills, but had occasional weird outbreaks of sweating -- and my GI remained a mess. I took more Pepto Bismol.

I still had really no appetite, but Imet Leslie for breakfast. There, Ramu, the hotel manager, advised us that the Pokhara airport was closed due to limited visibility. This seemed surprising to us since the visibility was no different than any other day there – – heavily polluted smog. We were supposed to depart at 10:45 AM but with the weather delay we lingered at the hotel and had a leisurely breakfast.

The dental school delivered our "certificates of appreciation" for providing presentations on Friday. These formalities are important to the Nepali's.

We settled our bill with the hotel (approximately $300 total -- 2 rooms for 3 nights with some meals), and got a taxi to the airport ($10). We had the same taxi driver that Leslie had on Saturday as her guide to the Peace Pagoda and Shiva Temple. Taxis here are very small cars.

At the airport, we learned that the entire airport remain closed. When we checked in, we were moved to an "earlier" flight, but we still had no idea when we might actually fly. Everything was delayed.

I got some special attention going through airport security.

We had a long wait in the airport. Finally, sometime after noon, the visibility "improved" enough that the airport reopened. We were on the 3rd flight out.

We rode a bus to our airplane.

We finally took off maybe around 1:30 PM.

Everything always works out for the best. Because of our delay, it was a good thing that Travis wasn't waiting for us at the Kathmandu airport. Our hospital driver, Llama, picked us up. Without Travis, Dr Kafle had asked us to pick up 2 4th year German dental students from a Kathmandu hotel. They had arrived a few days prior and are planning to spend a month at the Dhulikhel school. This is Anna and Caroline.

We dropped the girls at their guesthouse and then we arrived back at the DLR. We met up with Travis and Dr. Kafle for some wild boar meat.

Dr. Kafle returned to Kathmandu for the evening and Leslie and I hosted Travis for his first Nepali dinner.

I am now scheduled to speak at this meeting in April. It seems funny to have an endodontist speaking at an implant meeting.