Lukla or bust

It's Sunday, November 3, on the eve of our trek. But... the trekking commences in Lukla, a 30 minute flight from Kathmandu. The weather's forced the Lukla airport to close the last three days. Following gear check and baseline health check (pulse: 61, oxygen saturation: 97%) and a nice group dinner featuring Nepali Thali and dessert of fried dough balls in syrup (which of course elicited many jokes about "yak balls"), there's nothing else to do but to enjoy a night's rest at the Hotel Shangri La in Kathmandu and see what the morning brings...

The next day, Amy tells us the Lukla airport is operating, but it will take a while to clear the backlog. If our flights fall through, Tusker Trail will have to hire helicopters to get us to Lukla.

Soon, Lukla clears up, but smog has grounded flights out of Kathmandu! But eventually everything clears up and we gather our bags and get on the bus to the airport. As we arrive, we can see wild monkeys climbing the roof and power lines of the domestic terminal building. We weigh our bags (we must pay 200 rupees for each additional kilogram over 15 kg) and settle into the waiting area, which turns into a good opportunity to get to know Amy.

Soon a bus takes us across the tarmac to the Tara Air Dornier 228-202K/212. Fourteen of us can ride this plane; Jugdeep, Eric, and Mingma have to take a second plane. The flight to Lukla is easy... the landing on the 460-yard runway at Tenzing-Hillary Airport was a thrill. The landing (not me - honest, I was a rock) was too shaky for me to get any good video.

 The Kathmandu-Lukla travel adventure

After a nice lunch (tuna salad, soup, potatoes, and warm mango juice!) at the lodge where we met our sherpas we grab our daypacks, fill our water, and start the trek! It's early afternoon - much later than the normal departure. Our itinerary allocated five hours to hike to Phakding, but it's already 2:45... Amy told us we would try to hike faster and finish in 4 hours. We expect to be hiking in the dark.

Not what we wear when
hiking in the dark

This close to Lukla, there are many lodges along the route. We start the hike at about 9,000' and immediately start  descending towards the Kohd Dosi river. We are rewarded with great views, waterfalls, many yak trains, and many other trekkers, most of whom are returning to Lukla at this late hour. The trail has a lot of up and down, but the surface is good and my sturdy Asolo Drifter boots are serving me well and my feet are comfortable. I also use my trekking poles, which are a help on some of the steeper ascents and descents.

The sun soon sets behind the mountain peaks that surround us and we all turn on our headlamps. (These are nice light LED head lamps.) After about three hours of hiking, it is now pretty dark; I figure we have another hour of hiking. We cross the river from east to west on a long cable bridge. On the other side, we come to a nice looking lodge, The Star Lodge. It looks pretty good - then Amy tells us we've arrived! We'd covered our first six miles in about three hours, a very good pace.

We settle into the lodge room for tea (or coffee or hot chocolate) and popcorn - awesome! I'm not a coffee drinker and while I can handle tea, it's not my favorite either, so I drank hot chocolate at most of our breaks (which is probably why I did not lose any weight on this trek!) We went to our rooms and cleaned up a little, then returned for dinner (soup, spaghetti, carrot&cabbage salad, rice, garlic toast, and diced veggies - I'm definitely not going to go hungry on this trek!

The trek begins

Tomorrow, the real climbing starts. After a 6:30 wake up call (which in Nepal means sherpas knocking on your door) and breakfast, we'll hike from Phakding (2,640m) to Namche Bazaar (3,440m), but the first half of the day will be a lot of up and down, so the total climb will be much more than 800m.  It's time to get to bed and get some rest.