Really, I'm a Lady!

Short Version:
Onwards and upwards, eventually.

Long Version: Delhi was fun, but we were ready to leave by the time it was time to leave. Old hands at Delhi after four days, we watched with interest as an increasingly excited mob formed around a newly-arrived and rather bemused-looking Westerner seeking transport, and then we were retracing our steps over the railway tracks and down to the Metro station for the journey to Indira Gandhi International airport.

We travelled by Metro a lot while in Delhi. It's easy, convenient, and cheap. They even have one car per train reserved for ladies only! It is possible, we discovered, for men to travel in this car. However, one becomes the target of many, many staring eyes. It's a bit uncomfortable, even when one's been spending most of one's time with many staring eyes following one's movements because one is a) not Indian AND b) have tattoos OR c) are attractive. In the ladycar, some of the stares were glares, others seemed amused at the not-very-brightness of the foreigner.

Delhi is a hazy-aired city, and the Airport Metro Express affords some grand views of various towers marching into fog/smog/other-shrouded distance beneath a big orange sun. Birds of prey wheel overhead in many places, engendering wonderment about just what - or who - they might be eyeballing from above and preparing to rend and devour.

And then we reached the airport, and made it as far as the doors, where we queued before a gun-toting, moustachioed soldier who wanted to see passports and tickets before we were allowed in. Once we produced the documents, he told us we had to go to the next door along, because the check-in desks for our airline were in that direction. Given that a) there was a queue at the other door and b) once inside the door we could have walked across to our check-in counter in well under a minute, we contemplated an objection. Briefly. Then we queued at the other door. The gun-toting, moustachioed soldier at the head of that queue looked good and hard at both of us before allowing us through, probably on one hand trying to reconcile the clean-shaven, short-haired passport Puppet with the hairy version in front of him. Suspect that on the other hand he was just checking Nene out.

Check-in itself was comparatively painless, especially compared with the multituinous security checks and red-tape we then had to endure. One of the security goons decided he did NOT like the cut of the Puppet jib, and it took three walks through the sensor gate, one extra-throrough pat-down, and various clothing-removals before we were through to the departing passenger area, where we found... MORE SECURITY CHECKS!

Finally, they let us onto the plane, and into the sky, and back to earth at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal