First published
11th April 200

For example the last time I flew to India 5 years ago with Richard our bicycles arrived from the UK. without a hitch, but when it came to our return flight the clerk checking in our baggage was adamant that we should pay somewhere in the region of 250 pounds between us to have them put aboard. Having already had to borrow the 12 pounds required for airport tax from our fellow passengers as we had the grand total of approximately 40 pence between us, we felt that we could borrow no more, thus presenting us with a rather unexpected and unwelcome problem. I could not obtain any more money from my credit card (no change there then!) and after the third attempt, Richard finally managed to acquire 100 pounds which unfortunately still fell well short of the ridiculously imposed baggage excess total. With nobody else in the company with which we could discuss our plight and after a couple of rather heated exchanges, with only about 20 minutes to go he finally let us through to board, casually placing the not insubstantial bundle of notes into his shirt pocket and dismissing us with a flick of his hand towards passport control. Utterly powerless and completely frustrated we were ultimately just glad to be flying home!

It is indeed a fact that more often than not I have experienced unexpected delays and complications when attempting to fly with baggage and bikes. The most alarming instance concerned a flight to Munich with my cousin Mike to begin a 6 week tour of Central and Eastern Europe where from a grand total of 8 bags and 2 bikes a measly one pannier was all that found its way onto the carousel! The inconvenience of a 5 hour wait at the airport terminus for the rest of luggage was to some extent compensated by an allowance of around 15 pounds each for the restaurant and bar and doubly so by the non-attendance of the 'Weiss-beir' pump just a couple of feet away from where we were sitting. Along with the enforced delay, however it did result in a rather substandard first days cycling although it did provide a rather entertaining exit from the airport confines along the Autobahn!

Anyhow, to bring us up to the present, Nick and I had agreed to fly with Bangladeshis premiere (and only) airline - Biman Bangladesh, as one of the limited options for a near direct flight to Kathmandu in Nepal. We were standing on the runway at Dhaka airport, somewhat bleary eyed from the lack of sleep on our 10 hour flight from London and feeling slightly faint in the mid morning heat which was exaggerated by the fact that both of us had come from the cold and murky gloom of England and were wearing the majority of our clothing in a rather futile and vein attempt to stay within our meagre baggage allowance limit. In front of us was our petite twin prop plane that was due to take us the relatively short hop to Kathmandu. I asked one of the baggage handlers squatting on his haunches in the shade of a wing if they had loaded the two unmistakably large bicycle boxes aboard which I attempted to depict with rotary pedalling like motions and great stretches of my arms that any fisherman would have been proud. He replied with the customary simultaneous nod and twitch of the head and hand that all Asians instinctively perform which meant anything from "Yes" to "No" and was therefore probably a fairly accurate response to a question and series of gesticulations to which he no doubt did not understand!

Somewhat apprehensive about the apparent lack of space for both personnel and property we were ushered aboard our tiny plane with alas, as it turned out, no room for our bikes which were to remain in Dhaka, at least for the time being, whilst we by-passed the magnificent Mount Everest standing proud and imposing above the cloud as we zipped towards Kathmandu.

Having discovered the not totally unexpected scenario that our bicycles hadn't arrived, the following day an identical fax from Dhaka informed us that they were still being held in Bangladesh with no indication as to any reason for the delay. After a lengthy phone conversation with Mr. Amid at the Biman office at Nepals Tribhuvan Airport,. he offered little more than his hopes and good fortune amidst his unfounded optimism that our bikes would arrive in the next day....or seven! Needing more than empty promises to cycle into Tibet, we visited the airport and spoke very diplomatically and again at great length to Mr. Amid to try and break the stalemate and disparity in distance of some several hundred miles between us and our bikes. Inconvenient or excessively complicated possibilities such as one of us flying back to Bangladesh to dismantle the bikes or to have them travel overland to Nepal as well as the offer of new Nepalese bikes being exchanged for our own with just one gear and the smallest of frames were all discounted for various reasons.

It so transpired that our bicycles and corresponding boxes were just too big and would not physically fit through the entrance of the cargo hold. Having taken numerous messages, conversations and the location and examination of aircraft plans to ascertain the actual problem, the end result of our negotiations meant that our steads would therefore now have to be transferred to Bangkok, having already been flown from London to Dhaka in an attempt to reach Nepal, where an alternative airline would deliver the bulky boxes for us instead. We were informed that this was the first time that this particular problem and rather farcical situation had occurred and even more so than one might reasonably expect, from their rather haphazard and uncoordinated approach we could well believe it. Not a particularly promising start to a 10 month expedition with our bikes appearing to do a hell of a lot more travelling than ourselves, but the question was would things get better?

Tim