Nepal’s medal-winning women’s kabaddi team has reportedly spent close to two days stranded at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport while trying to return home from the 2026 Asian Games in Japan, turning one of the country’s proudest sporting moments of the Games into an uncomfortable test of how Nepal looks after its athletes once the competition is over.
Reports circulating on Tuesday and Wednesday put the team’s wait at around 40 hours. An earlier report by Nepal’s Rajdhani Daily documented the players as having already been stranded for between 15 and 18 hours at the time of publication, after repeated flight delays disrupted their return to Kathmandu. The later 40-hour figure has not yet been independently confirmed by an official Nepal sporting body or airline statement.
The ordeal comes only days after Nepal’s women secured a bronze medal in kabaddi at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, giving the country back-to-back medals in the sport after also finishing with bronze at the 2023 Hangzhou Games. Nepal lost its September 25 semi-final against India 48-24, after India established a 31-17 lead in the first half and added another 17 points after the break.
The result was still a major achievement for Nepal.
Captain Manamati Bist’s team had opened its campaign with a dramatic 46-43 comeback victory against Thailand after trailing 24-15 at half-time. Nepal then lost 37-18 to Chinese Taipei before defeating Sri Lanka in its final group match to reach the semi-finals and guarantee a medal.
It was Nepal’s second medal of the Aichi-Nagoya Games, after karateka Tenzing Sherpa won bronze in the men’s 84kg kumite event. The kabaddi bronze also confirmed the women’s team as one of Nepal’s most consistent performers at the continental level.
Yet days after standing on the Asian Games podium, members of that team were reportedly sleeping and waiting inside one of Asia’s busiest airports with no certainty about when they would get home.
According to Rajdhani Daily, the team had a flight scheduled for September 28 and was told on the evening of September 27 to leave its accommodation and travel to the airport. The report said the players and officials then spent hours waiting through repeated delays before travelling through Thailand and becoming stuck at Bangkok airport.
The report said members of the delegation had sought assistance from Nepal’s government and its diplomatic representatives in Thailand but claimed they had received little response. It also alleged that, at the time the story was published, officials from the Nepal Olympic Committee and National Sports Council had not contacted the stranded group.
Those claims warrant answers from the organisations responsible for Nepal’s Asian Games delegation.
Flight disruptions caused by extreme weather are clearly beyond the control of sports administrators. Ensuring athletes have accommodation, food, communication and assistance when international travel collapses is not.
There is also a substantial difference between being unable to prevent an airline delay and leaving a national sporting team unsure who is responsible for helping them through it.
The disruption in Bangkok is real and has affected considerably more passengers than the Nepal delegation.
Days of severe flooding across the Thai capital have disrupted transport and prevented airport workers from reaching Suvarnabhumi. Thai authorities were forced to deploy 69 air force personnel to assist with ground handling at the airport, where staff shortages caused delays in baggage processing and other services.
Flooding affected all 50 districts of Bangkok, according to local authorities cited by AP, with around 329,000 households affected and thousands of residents moved into shelters. Airport operations were among the services disrupted as roads flooded and employees struggled to get to work.
The Nepali athletes were also not the only Asian Games competitors caught in the chaos.
Six members of Bangladesh’s table-tennis delegation and 14 members of its men’s kabaddi team were reported stranded at Suvarnabhumi Airport after returning from Japan. The table-tennis contingent had initially been delayed by almost 12 hours leaving Japan because of a typhoon, causing them to miss their onward flight in Bangkok. They subsequently spent more than 36 hours waiting as repeated Thai Airways departure times came and went.
That broader disruption provides important context. It suggests the Nepal team’s predicament was not the result of a uniquely botched booking or isolated cancellation.
But it does not remove questions about how the Nepali delegation was supported once the problem became clear.
National teams travelling to major international competitions do so under the management of sporting authorities precisely because elite athletes should not be left individually negotiating emergency travel arrangements thousands of kilometres from home.
The circumstances are especially striking given the effort Nepal put into preparing the kabaddi teams for these Games.
Nepal’s men trained for two months in Haryana, India, ahead of Aichi-Nagoya as part of preparations supported by the Nepal Olympic Committee and National Sports Council. The women also undertook international preparation and exposure before the Games.
After securing the women’s medal, captain Bist publicly credited the government, National Sports Council and All Nepal Kabaddi Association for supporting the team’s preparation.
“We got to train properly for about two years, competing at different international tournaments,” Bist told journalists after the Sri Lanka victory, saying that international exposure had helped Nepal recover from difficult situations during the competition.
Coach Parbati Rai, who also guided Nepal to bronze at the previous Asian Games, described the consecutive medals as particularly meaningful as she approached the end of her coaching career.
That makes what happened after the medal all the more jarring.
A sporting system cannot measure its commitment to athletes only by training camps, send-off ceremonies and photographs taken before departure.
The duty of care continues when the medals have been won, the cameras have moved on and athletes are trying to get home.
There is a further layer of irony.
Nepal went into the 2026 Asian Games with considerable ambitions after launching its Mission 2026 program following Hangzhou. The country has historically struggled to convert Asian Games participation into medals and is still pursuing its first gold at the continental event. Before the 2026 Games, Nepal had accumulated just three silver and 23 bronze medals across its Asian Games history.
The women’s kabaddi team therefore represents precisely the type of program Nepal would want to build around: a team capable of delivering medals at consecutive Asian Games despite competing against countries with far deeper sporting resources.
The players have done their part.
They defeated Thailand, survived a difficult group, beat Sri Lanka when a medal was on the line and reached another Asian Games semi-final.
The question now is whether the institutions around them can demonstrate the same level of preparation when events outside the sporting arena go wrong.
The episode also comes during a Games already criticised over logistics.
Aichi-Nagoya organisers publicly apologised after an unexpected increase in athletes and officials placed pressure on accommodation and transport systems. Participation reached about 17,000 people — roughly 2,000 more than organisers had projected — leading to complaints about cramped accommodation, transport delays and missed training sessions.
Asian Games organising committee secretary-general Satoshi Murate accepted responsibility for those problems, saying organisers had made mistakes and were working to improve conditions.
However, the difficulties involving Nepal’s kabaddi team in Bangkok appear to be a separate problem arising after its departure from Japan, against the backdrop of Thailand’s severe flooding and aviation disruption.
Responsibility therefore needs to be separated carefully.
The airline and extraordinary weather conditions explain why flights may have been delayed.
Thai authorities are responsible for keeping their airport operating during the flooding.
But Nepal’s Olympic and sporting officials are responsible for ensuring their delegation is not abandoned when those systems fail.
If the reports that athletes sought assistance without receiving a timely response are correct, officials should explain what contingency plans existed, who was managing the delegation’s return travel, whether hotel accommodation was sought once the scale of the delay became clear and what assistance was requested from Nepal’s embassy in Bangkok.
They should also clarify how long the players were ultimately stranded.
The first published Nepalese report documented at least 15 to 18 hours at the airport. Subsequent accounts have put the ordeal at around 40 hours. As of Wednesday, a clear public statement from the Nepal Olympic Committee, National Sports Council or relevant diplomatic authorities explaining the timeline was not readily available.
That silence risks allowing an otherwise understandable weather-related travel disruption to become a story about institutional neglect.
For the players, the contrast could hardly be sharper.
On Friday they were representing Nepal in an Asian Games semi-final against India.
They returned with a second consecutive Asian Games bronze medal — an achievement few Nepalese team sports have matched.
Days later, they were reportedly waiting hour after hour inside Bangkok airport, uncertain when they would finally reach Kathmandu.
Nepal rightly celebrates its athletes when they bring home medals.
The treatment of its bronze-winning kabaddi team raises a more uncomfortable question: when the podium ceremony is over, who makes sure those athletes actually get home?
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