We’ve brought back our popular reader success and mistake stories<\/a><\/span> here at TPG to both celebrate your wins and learn from your errors.<\/p>\n This week’s success story is from reader Karina S., whose careful planning ensured she was financially and medically covered during a recent remote emergency in the Himalayas.<\/p>\n In her previous travels, Karina generally didn’t buy insurance.<\/p>\n “But when I started booking ski camps, altitude rescue insurance was a common requirement. So when I planned a 13-day trek of Nepal’s Manaslu Circuit, topping out at the 16,929-foot Larkya La Pass, I bought a policy through TravelGuard. By day three in Deng, a dull abdominal ache had become sharp. I have a high pain tolerance, but this scared me, and we were out of range for any sort of vehicular rescue. I called my insurer to flag it, just in case it got worse before I planned to hike down the mountain.”<\/p>\n She then called a hospital in Kathmandu, where the nurse listened to her dire situation and insisted on sending a helicopter.<\/p>\n “Even better, TravelGuard paid upfront, no fronting thousands of dollars and filing later,” she said. “It took 12 hours for the helicopter to arrive. The 40-minute flight off a tiny cliffside ended at CIWEC Hospital in Kathmandu, where I was triaged fast, scanned, and to my enormous relief told I didn’t need surgery. Two days later, I paid roughly $1,500 in cash to settle up my hospital bill and flew to Hong Kong. TravelGuard reimbursed it within weeks.”<\/p>\n While some of the top travel credit cards offer comprehensive travel insurance<\/a><\/span>, activities like a Himalayan mountain climb may not be covered by credit card insurance or may have important exclusions.<\/p>\n For example, the popular Chase Sapphire Reserve\u00ae<\/a><\/span> (see rates and fees<\/a><\/span>) includes emergency evacuation and transportation, which covers up to $100,000 of qualifying transportation and evacuation costs to get you to the nearest facility capable of treating a serious illness or injury.<\/p>\n However, the claim can be denied where the medical evacuation provider did not authorize the emergency medical evacuation, transportation or repatriation of remains in advance. If Karina’s phone call to the hospital did not recommend a helicopter, but Karina insisted on one anyway, Chase could have denied the claim as an unauthorized medical evacuation, and Karina would have been thousands of dollars out of pocket.<\/p>\n Reward your inbox with the TPG Daily newsletter<\/p>\n Join over 700,000 readers for breaking news, in-depth guides and exclusive deals from TPG\u2019s experts<\/p>\nWhat happened?<\/h2>\n
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