Day1 (March 19th 2024)
Reached Kathmandu airport (Elevation: 4390ft) by 6:30am. Airport was bustling with hiker and climbers. Very exhilarating scene with backpacks, duffle bags, hiking boots everywhere.
Our Summit airlines flight to Lukla supposed to takeoff at 7AM. It’s 18 seat small plane go to and fro between Kathmandu and Lukla through out the day transporting Everest hikers and climbers. Due weather, flight delayed until 10am. At 10am, after taxing all the way to runway, flight canceled due to high winds at Lukla. we had to come back and de-plane at terminal. Small planes like this cannot withstand strong winds. We had no choice than to wait and hope situation get better later in the day.
Wait was ended at 3PM with all flights to Lukla cancelled for the day. There were two options left for us, either to hire chopper or drive to Ramachhap (4 hours drive) and take early morning flight to Lukla. Flights from Ramachhap has better chances than Kathmandu as all flights to Lukla booked for several days.
Chopper can fly in the windy situations. But chopper are all booked for the day. Don’t want to take another chance with Kathmandu-Lukla. So we decided to drive to Ramachhap and take early morning flight to Lukla from there.
The trek started jittery… but that’s the deal with mountains…unpredictable weather. We will have to push little bit harder tomorrow to get all the way to Namche Bazaar to gain back one day. More later
Day2 (March 20th 2024)
Sometimes, simple and easy task/achievement/milestone can become difficult, arduous and
complicated due to things that may not be in our control or due to unforeseen circumstances. What’s important is to focus on objectives and push forward to achieve goals instead of wasting time on thinking why it’s happened to you. Reaching EBC trail, a simple 30min flight to Lukla turned out be challenging in same way to me. Sitting ducks and waiting for things to get better for you is not my way. I weigh more to certainty than unknown, even if the path is harder.
Our flight supposed to be at 7:30 from Ramachhap airport in Manthali. I woke up for loud bangs on door at 6am. Summit airlines representative waking up everyone to get ready for the flight…only happens in Nepal 😀
We reached small village hotel last night at 9. Hotel is right opposite to airport. We walked in with luggage into chaotic departure room.
There are 24 passengers and need two flights ( flights from Manthali are even smaller). Because it’s only 15 min flight, whenever opportunity knocks, flights will take off more often from here than Kathmandu. Our waiting game started from 6:30am and ended by 10am with heavy rain. Both flights and helicopters are grounded. Weather situation forecast to be bad until Friday.
Me and Mangal ( my guide) started exploring other avenues. We can’t rely on possibility of weather clearing on Friday. Best possible way is to hire a local jeep and travel Salleri, 6 hour, 170 KM road trip on mountains and stay for the night. Next day hire local 4-wheel drive vehicle to cross 80 KM off-road trail to connect with original trail Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay at Puiyan ( they reached 7th day to Puiyan) (Paiya our actual destination). Our estimated was that it takes 6 hours. If we start at 4, we reach 10 AM and start our hike to Phakding. This puts us 2 days behind schedule.
Since both Salleri and Paiya jeep trips cost high, we started recruiting team to join us. Trijit, software engineer from Calcutta is quick to join us. He asked his guide to join him at Phakding instead of Lukla. Deb and Zoya, couple from Calcutta are convinced as well. They needed to hire a porter in Lukla, but they decided to check their luck in Paiya. Jenny, French girl, living in Pune joined with her guide Raj. We already over recruited at that point. We started at 10:30am and reached Salleri by 4:30PM. Entire 6 hours was raining and foggy.
I observed the property level in Nepal in my two days of rural Nepal road trips. It’s very saddening to such a beautiful country.
Stayed in nice Everest hotel in Phaplu. “Nice” is of course relative. Had good time relaxing and mingling with hikers and climbers from across the world.
llmswamy Photography 