Starting the Everest Trek
Trip Start
Nov 24, 2007
1
6
23
Trip End
Dec 22, 2007
Lukla,
Nepal
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
I went on a necessary shopping spree yesterday just to collect the necessary items that I need for this. It's so easy to find everything here that I need.
Booking the flight from Kathmandu to Lukla was very interesting. He made it a point to say that it is a very adventurous flight but I think he was eluding to the fact that he would never take that flight! So his salesmenship wasn't perfect but hey we bought the tickets anyways.
We made sure that we got up nice and early for our flight scheduled to leave from Kathmandu to Lukla today. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:30am so not wanting to take any chances we got up at 5am and got to the airport before 6am in the dark of the early morning hours. Well, the flight kept getting postoned by the hour, due to fog, and we were only herded onto the airport bus to our plane by 10am.
But that wasn't the end of the waiting as then we waited on the runway, in the airport bus, for another 45 minutes until our plane arrived! This plane would have to be emptied and then we were of course allowed on.
It all seemed a bit unfair because out of the over hundred tourists who were awaiting their flights towards the mountains we were among the first to arrive but the very last to leave! This led us to create a slogan for our air carrier named Sita Air: "Fly Sita. Fly last". It definitely seemed to fit on this day.
Anyways, once we were on the plane the views of the mountains were amazing even if they were somewhat obscured by clouds. Our little 16 seater plane was pretty steady seemed to handle everything well but I wasn't sure how it was going to handle the landing in Lukla!
I've never seen a landing strip quite like this. Picture a hillside where you see a runway except that there is a cliff-drop at one end and a wall of rock at the other end. Well, that was the runway that the plane was going to land on. The runway was so short that bigger planes than what we were on could end up in the rock wall! To facilitate landing, the runway was built with an incline to make it easier to stop for planes attempting to land. Although that fact did little to alleviate my anxiety.
Anyways, it was an incredible landing strip and quite fantastic watching as we inevitably approached this unforgivable runway. The plane touched down and eventually came to a stop inches (ok, maybe metres) before the rock wall. The landing itself was well worth the ticket price.
In any case, we had now arrived in Lukla and this is the place where our Everest Trek begins.
