When I returned to Katmandu from Pokhara by bus, I immediately went back to the Muool Lodge in Pig’s Alley that I had stayed at during my first visit.  When I tried to check-in, the manager got very excited and said, “Mr. Oviatt, Mr. Oviatt, big trouble.  The Embassy man has been looking for you and came here to talk with us.  You are not permitted to register until you visit the American Embassy.  Big trouble.”  I was pretty spaced out from the trek and long bus ride. I couldn’t imagine why the Embassy was looking for me—had something terrible happened at home?  I figured out how to get to the Embassy and made my way over there on foot.  The guard at the gate—usually very formal and suspicious guys on the outlook for terrorists and trouble—listened to my story, called someone inside, and then said, “Mr. Oviatt, you will be escorted directly to the office of the Ambassador.”  What the hell?

I didn’t actually see the Ambassador, but was met by a middle-aged career employee in the US Foreign Service.  He said that I must have connections back home because the Office of US Representative Larry Pressler had put out an alert in Afghanistan, India and Nepal to locate me.  I explained that I had been on the Congressional Staff for two years and the two of us had a great chat about what it was like to be in the Foreign Service in Nepal—he said most of his days were filled with “rugs or drugs” issues involving US tourists who got in trouble in Nepal.  He updated me on the results of the recent US election—“Representative Pressler” was now “US Senator-elect Pressler” (I had been the campaign manager of his US Senate race at the time I resigned…..I had mixed feelings about his victory.)  The foreign service guy said I was welcome to catch up on news in the Embassy library and enjoy some tea until the Embassy closed.  He also said that he needed to get a telegram off to Senator-elect Pressler and to my father confirming that I had been located in Nepal and was safe.  My father gave me his copy of the telegram upon my return and made it clear that he and my mother had been worried sick for weeks. The last Aerogramme they received from me was from Kabul as I was headed to Pakistan and didn’t know for sure if I would be going to Kashmir, India, or Nepal next.  It turns out that two other letters I had sent including one I sent from Nepal before I started the trek had been delayed a long time—they eventually were received but not before I was the subject of a three-country search by the US Embassy.