Getting started

Anyway, between working I spent last summer reading heaps of books about places interesting enough to be written books about. I bought a ticket from Norway to Nepal, and a ticket from the USA back to Norway, a travel insurance and in early September I was ready to go.

I have to admit that the last few days before leaving, I had a lot of mixed feelings about the trip. If I stayed home, I would know exactly what next week would be like. If I really travelled, I would have no idea whatsoever where I would be doing what in a country I knew little about. Well, I knew that the people there would speak a language I didn't know. I also knew that what I normally eat would not only be unavailable, it would even be considered holy in many cases. But most important, I knew that the next week at home was exactly what I was wanting to get away from.

So, I went. I spent the night between Thursday 12. and Friday 13. of September filling my backpack with things I thought would be smart to bring. The last thing I did was realize why the Lonely Planet books have this section of empty pages labelled "Notes" in the back. I taped my money reserves in there, and slept for a couple of hours. It was time to go to the airport. I said goodbye to my family, and it was a beautiful morning in Brønnøysund. It was so beautiful, that I didn't notice I had forgotten the only jacket I was bringing, at the desk at the airport, until my plane touched down in Trondheim and it was cold outside. I called home and had my parents send it express to Oslo, where I might be lucky enough to pick it up on Monday.

After getting to the bottom of my e-mailbox and having a last supper with my friends from the university, I got on the train to Oslo. Going over the Dovre moutains, I saw what I hoped would be the only snow for me for a long time to come. If everything went well, I would get three summers in a row. To me, that would be a good thing.

Oslo was, well.... Oslo. I met some more friends and had another dinner, insanely expensive by the standards I was to meet, and I did take a decent goodbye with Norway, seeing the Holmenkollen ski jump and eating some errr.... proper food. I also went to the Vigeland Park, where Gustav Vigeland's sculptures can give anyone a kick in the direction of thinking big. Finally going inside some other culture than the one I am brought up in, would hopefully be an important step on my way to get "bigger".

The last thing I did was to go with my hostess, Anne Lene to see "Fargo", the Oscar-winning comedy about slow-thinking rather narrow-horizonted Minnesotans with Norwegian ancestors. Great fun. I was ready.

On my way to the airport, I picked up my one month, 350 Norwegian kroner, single entry visa to Nepal and was all set. Or so I thought... When I was checking in at Oslo International Airport, Fornebu, it turned out something was very wrong with the booking of the second flight on my ticket. Luckily it was not my fault, and even better, although all economy class seats were taken, there was an empty seat on business class on the London - New Delhi flight. So things worked out just great.

So it was with great expectations for the journey ahead I wandered onto to plane Carrickfergus of British Airways, with my kilo of tax free chocolate, at 17:26 on September 16., 1996. The most amazing thing happened as soon as the plane took off from Fornebu, and I opened the newspaper, The Daily Mail, for this very day. Here is what my horoscope read:

H.G. Wells was a Virgo. This may well be why he fantasised about a
time machine. You, too, often wish you could put the clock forward (or
back) at your convenience. Today, you feel especially prone to indulge
in such wishful thinking. You yearn to be somewhere else, doing
something different. But in an odd kind of way, you are now in the
closest thing you can get to a time machine. Make the right choices
this week, and you'll alter both the future and the past.

Scary. That was exactly how I felt and thought about it, as I sat on flight BA145, chewing on my airline bread and enjoying the airline circus on the TV screen in front of me.

I was on my way.