Our flight to Kathmandu was not without incident. From Los Angeles, on the second leg, our pilot lost his battle with unusually strong headwinds and had to make an unscheduled night time refuel stop in Japan. However, our long layover in Hong Kong gave us a chance to stretch our legs and explore the city, including a pleasant ferry ride across Victoria Harbour. But, the following evening we arrived exhausted at Tribhuvan International Airport, with a feeling comparable to “warmed over death.”

Somewhat revived after a short night’s sleep, our first planned order of business was a side trip to Birganj, 283 km to the south of the capital city, and just 3 km north of the Nepal – India border. By all accounts, this border city (population 112,484) has little to recommend it as a tourist destination, but Birganj lies very close to the crossing of two imaginary lines – latitude 27° North and longitude 85° West. This seemed to be the “low hanging fruit” in a country where most such whole integer lat-long intersections are extremely inaccessible, and we wanted badly to be the first to document a visit there for the Degree Confluence Project .

Although we had planned our expedition to Birganj months in advance, we discovered we had arrived during a week when the area had become a center of political unrest. The town has significant economic importance for Nepal as a large part of goods and material to the land-locked country are brought in from India through Birganj. Locals, wishing to influence the writing of a new Nepali constitution had blocked the road, halting all trade to the Kathmandu Valley until their concerns were addressed. It did not seem an auspicious time for two western strangers with a GPS to be wandering around agricultural fields in that neighborhood. So we remained in Kathmandu, very disappointed…