Monday 18 Feb 2013 Everest

Up early yet again to try for the Everest flight. Well we got on the bus and then onto the plane. 8 rows of 2 seats, very cosy. Then the wait to see if we would take off. Our 7am flight was still on the Tarmac at 07:50 when the engines were fired up and we had wings up at 8am.

We flew along the Himalayas at 25000 feet (Everest is 29028 feet) then turned and flew back so that passengers on each side could get a good view. Everyone had the chance of going up to the cockpit to speak to the pilot and view Everest from there.

Then back to the Radisson. We should be used to the 30 min journey but no. The constant cacophony of horns as buses, cars, motorcycles, bikes and pedestrians vie for every piece of road. There are no road markings. Their 4 lane road (equivalent to UK 2 lane) consistently changes at the behest of the road users on a minute by minute basis. Two lanes in each direction can, at the drop of a hat, become 1/3 or 0/4. Unlike UK, road rage does not exist but maybe this is due to their religious beliefs in that they must improve to reach Nirvana. (A lesson for our road users?) We are assured that drivers do need to pass a driving test which came as a bit if a surprise.

John and Terry felt a bit weary with a touch of the sun yesterday (I can hear Liz now) but we have got our hats now and together with David are feeling the effect of being up at 5:30am for 3 days for the aborted trips to the airport.

After breakfast we headed back to the airport for our 12:30 flight to Pokhara expecting that we would take off eventually. Sure enough delays meant we were wings up at 14:03.

Major Lil met us at Pokhara and we settled at our hotel. Lil brought in the laptops and we proceeded to install antivirus. Internet connections were slow and in addition we needed to fix other issues which meant that we will not complete the updates until tomorrow or we will need to finish in Daraun.  As it turns out this is not a issue as there is a general strike in Nepal tomorrow so our travel to Daraun is delayed until the following day. Indeed we will use this to get some sleep and recharge our batteries.

John is still full of the cold and it looks like he had now passed it on to David and Terry.