What did you do today? Oh you know, flew over Everest

Saturday

August 10, 2013

The morning started at 5:30 (or for Barrett, at 5am when the front desk called to ask if he was awake. He was not.) Jenny, Julia, Barrett and Kristy met in front of the hotel at 5:45am to get shuttled back to the Kathmandu airport. Jan, being Jan, slept. After being frisked several times, we got through security and waited for our 6:30am flight. We were given our “Everest Express” tickets, and felt like huge happy sleepy tourists.

Team Everest in Kathmandu airport, 6am

 

That 6:30am flight got bumped to a 7:30am flight. Which got bumped to 8am. Would there be any mountains left to see, we pondered. We tried seducing the security guards to call our flight number (Flight 305, Flight 305, ppplllleeeeaaassseeeeee) to absolutely no avail. We were pretty convinced they called all the other flights just to spite us.

Special gate for the lady folk. Barrett tried to go through, unsuccessfully

Eventually we were called (we might have run to the gate) and boarded a bus with a couple other tourists. They made us sit in the bus and look at our plane (um, quite small…..) for a long time before letting us board.

Our little plane

We got on the plane, at which point Julia and Jenny realized they were right over the propellers. Punishment for our impatience? The flight attendant handed out butterscotches to ease the pain. We took off, flying over Kathmandu and towards the Himalayas. The mountains were very cloudy, but we could see all of them towering over the cloud line. One by one we were allowed to go into the cockpit (we are definitely not in America anymore) and the pilot would point out the different mountains. “Everest is on the left” “On the left?” “Yes” “That one?” “Yes” “On the left left?” “Yes” “Oh boy!”

Everest on the left

After we got off the plane we rode back to the hotel where we met up with a happy well rested Jan and ate (free J) breakfast. Julia had to keep everyone safe and remind us not to eat the eggs and chicken (Avian flu!). After breakfast we decided, after about an hour of deliberation, to explore some areas around Kathmandu. We first went to the Monkey Temple. The monkeys were not as mean and man-eating as we feared and we got a great cardio workout from the trillion steps up to the actual temple (its too exhausting even for the monkeys). We also learned the important lesson of having a meet up spot.

Monkey temple, sans the monkeys

After the monkey temple and some rough and tumble bargaining, we went to Bouddha, a city where a lot of Tibetan refugees live. Jenny pulled everyone into a traditional Tibetan restaurant for lunch with some good and bad results. After lunch we got a ride to Bhaktapur Durbar Square. We wandered around for an hour, trying to get lost down windy alleyways. Kristy successfully bought all of her presents for friends and Julia, Barrett and Jan got sim cards. Our ride, which was supposed to have waited, had left, so once again we found ourselves bartering with taxi drivers.

Barrett repping Hopkins

Bouddha

That night we went out to dinner close by at a place called the Curry Kitchen. The next day, Sunday, was going to be our first day in a heath setting so we were excited to get to bed and get ready.