This was quite an eventual return.
Firstly Royal Nepal Airlines decided to go on strike and I had to re-schedule a flight with Аэрофлот via Moscow a day later.
Secondly my Аэрофлот flight was scheduled to leave Kathmandu the day the ground war in Iraq started.
A colleague said to me “I am glad you are an old hand at this”!
When I arrived at Kathmandu International airport the departure board was still showing that the flight stopped off at Dubai. I was not at all sure that I wanted to stop off at Dubai in the middle of a ground war! I was assured we were going via Tashkent but I would have hours to kill in Moscow.
There was little evident of glasnost or perestroika at Moscow International airport and the only way to redeem meal vouchers was to completely fill each table and sit next to complete strangers!