We started our adventure on Sunday afternoon with a 2 hour drive to Billings. We met up with all of the team members for our last meal on American soil for the next couple weeks. The ladies were fortunate enough to be able to stay at a house where most of us got actual beds or a couch. The guys were not as lucky. They got the floor of a church building. We went to bed at a fairly decent time which allowed for us to get close to 6 hours of sleep.
We woke up by 3:00 a.m. so that we could make it to the airport by 4:00 a.m. Our ride came and then next thing we knew was that we were through security with only a couple people out of 25 that had to go in another room with TSA, backpacking gear and technology will do that to you. We were soon on the plane to Seattle to enjoy our 7 hour layover. We enjoyed our first team devotion during this time. The layover went by quicker than I anticipated. Soon we were on the plane to Tokyo for our 9.5 hour flight. I wasn’t able to sleep at all on this flight as it was still day time back home. I spent my time watching a movie, reading and journaling. The flight finally came to an end. We only spent a little less than 2 hours at Toyko before heading off to Bangkok.
The flight to Bangkok was 6.5 hours which didn’t sound so bad at first except we had already been traveling for hours. This fight seemed to take longer as we were approaching really late hours back home and we were already an entire day ahead because of the international date line. I was able to sleep for probably a good 3-4 hours, with interuptions of course, on the plane. This made it hard to relax and sleep while we had our 10 or so hour layover in Bangkok. In Bangkok, we met up with 5 other team members which we only knew 1 of them. We went and explored a few times which was great. This was the best airport in the world. The architecture was outstanding and since it is the largest single building airport in the world, it was the best place to go for a walk. I should have gone for a run! We wandered off to go get some tasty donuts, coffee, smoothies, Thai tea and whatever else we could find to keep ourselves busy. We sat down for another team devotion and some instructions for the events to come when we landed in Kathmandu.
We finally made it to the final plane which was only about a 3 hour flight. We were able to have some amazing food, as far as airplane food goes. It probably helped that we were eating Thai food which is one of my favorites! On our way into Kathmandu we were able to see the Himalayas from a short distances. It was such a beautiful view before we started to slowly make our decent into the smog and haze of the city. Throughout all of the secuirty check points we went through and customs, we never had any trouble. God made it so easy for us to get to Nepal so that we could spread his word in a hungry country.
