Failure to Launch

You don’t fly to Lukla unless you respect the mountain. The margin of error is inches, not meters.

~ Tara Air Pilot

We arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal just as the sun was setting over the silhouettes of distant mountains. It was fully dark by the time we made it through immigration, collected our luggage, and stepped outside of the airport into the smoggy air of Nepal’s capital city. We were immediately greeted by Sonam, one of the owners of iTREK Everest, the trekking company we’d hired to guide us all the way to Mount Everest’s base camp and back. 

Sonam placed white Khatas around our necks, a symbolic welcome to the country, and then we all hopped into his vehicle and set off for our hotel in Thamel.  Along the way, Sonam gave us a lot of great advice for what to see and do when we returned to Kathmandu after our trek, and mentioned that Tihar would just be starting the day after we got back.  Tihar is a Nepali festival that coincides with and has some similarities to Diwali.  By the time we reached Hotel Lo Mustang in the Thamel neighborhood, I was feeling just as excited to explore Kathmandu as I was to begin our trek.

But after we checked in with the front desk, Sonam sat us down to update us on some major flooding that had happened over the past couple of days due to a late season monsoon.  The storms were already subsiding, and our trekking schedule remained unchanged, but it turned out we would need to leave Kathmandu a day earlier than expected.

Getting to the beginning of the Everest Base Camp Trek is a journey in itself.  We were originally supposed to get a day in Kathmandu to stock up on supplies and trekking gear for the hike, then take a four hour drive to the Ramechhap airport in Manthali early the following morning.  After that, we would take a twenty minute flight to Lukla, where we would start hiking.  But the monsoon had flooded parts of the road to Manthali.  We would have to take a different road, and the trip would take at least nine hours instead of four.  So our group would have to leave for Manthali a day earlier in order to catch our flight.

This meant that Vince, Thadd, and I had to go out into Thamel and buy anything we needed for the trek ASAP.  We also had to unpack everything from our roller bags and switch into duffel bags that iTrekEverest had provided.  We thanked Sonam for the update, and then we hurried off to get some shopping done.

Luckily, Thamel is the perfect place to buy just about anything you might need for an EBC trek. It’s the biggest tourist hub in the city, and it’s streets are lined with shops that sell everything from yak wool hats to trekking poles to full down summit suits.  Of course we had no need of summit suits since actually climbing Mount Everest is of about as much interest to me as getting a tooth extraction without laughing gas, but there were a few items that I needed to get before we set off.

We popped out into the streets of Thamel in search of a trekking gear shop, and there was one right around the corner from our hotel.  Of course, there are dozens of these stores throughout Thamel, but we went ahead and stopped at the first one we encountered because we were so short on time.  Twenty minutes later, all three of us were stocked up on everything we needed.  I bought a goose down jacket, a pair of light fleece gloves, and a pair of fleece lined hiking pants, all dubiously branded with The North Face, and Arc’teryx logos.  With our shopping done, we grabbed a quick dinner, then retreated to the hotel to hastily pack our duffels.

Late the next morning, we made our way down to the lobby to meet the rest of our expedition team. We’d signed up for a public group trek, and all we knew about the group was that there would be seven total clients, two guides, and three porters on the team.  Other trekkers began joining us in the lobby, and we started to get to know each other. 

There was Tim, a voracious traveler from Seattle, who had already climbed Kilimanjaro and completed Peru’s Salkantay Trek.  Then there was Laura, a psychiatrist from Boston who had recently discovered her love of high altitude trekking on her own Kilimanjaro expedition.  And finally we met Kennedy and Sandy, a father-daughter duo from Canada. Kennedy was currently living and working in Banff National Park and had a more than impressive outdoor resume despite only being twenty-five.  And Sandy would become a motivating force for our entire group over the coming days. His spit-take inducing humor was matched only by his way of having the perfect, profoundly thoughtful sentiment whenever it was needed.

We also met PG, our Sherpa guide who would be the one making sure that everything went smoothly on our entire trek. In terms of climbing accomplishments he had us all beat with his recent summit of Island Peak, a 6,189 meter (20,300 foot) mountain that lies not too far from Everest Base Camp.  PG’s familiarity with the Khumbu region, network of friends and relatives, and experience with high altitude trekking came through for us countless times over the course of our trek. He also knew how to crack a joke to lighten any mood.

Once the team was assembled, we loaded our duffels onto the van that we’d be riding in, waved goodbye to Sonam, and set off.  We would meet our second guide, Mahesh, and our porters once we arrived in Lukla the next day.

I’ll spare the details of our long drive to Manthali.  Suffice it to say it was seemingly endless, at times nauseating (thank Kennedy for packing Zophran), and not overly comfortable. But a short eleven hours later, we arrived at a teahouse in Manthali just in time to eat dinner and head off to bed.

As we sat around a low dining table, a handful of trekkers filtered in and out of the teahouse. They mentioned how long they had been waiting in Manthali for a flight, some of them up to three days, and a sinking feeling set into my gut.  Even if the weather was good enough to fly in the morning, we would still have to wait for the backlog of people who had missed their flights over the past week. But that would be a tomorrow problem. For the moment, it was time to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up with the soft light of dawn filtering into the large room that I was sharing with both Vince and Thadd.  There were scarcely enough rooms in the teahouse to fit our entire group because of all the extra people who were still stuck waiting for flights.  I got dressed and then climbed out of our window to watch the sunrise from a balcony that wrapped around the whole floor.

The morning air was humid and the low hanging clouds had a warm tinge to them. An occasional egret flew overhead, a sight as peaceful as the dawn itself.

And then the sound of an engine ripped through the silent village.  The first flight of the day was ready to take off.

Vince and Thadd joined me on the balcony and the three of us celebrated as we saw a small, twin-engine airplane rambling along the runway of the nearby Ramechhap Airport. It had to be be a good sign that planes were taking off, maybe we would get a flight today after all! Within moments, it lifted gently into the sky, and soared away, looking almost like a toy against its backdrop of towering mountains.

With newly found enthusiasm, we gathered up our duffels and met the rest of the team for breakfast, after which we loaded up into the bed of a truck, and drove the short distance to the airport.  But when the truck bounced down the dirt driveway to the airport, we were greeted by a scene of controlled chaos.  Trekkers crowded in throngs around the tiny airport, weaving in between pyramids of stacked duffel bags.  And these were just the people still waiting to go through security, there was still an entire terminal inside full of people who were ahead of us in line.

Rather than wait in the melee, PG led us up to the rooftop of a nearby restaurant. From up there, we had a private place to relax, and a great vantage point to watch planes take off.

We would be flying Tara Air, and there were four flights ahead of us. Planes were taking off every fifteen to twenty minutes. They would make the twenty minute flight to Lukla, drop off their passengers, and then return to Manthali, so each plane was cycling through the airport every hour or so. They would continue with this routine as long as the weather held out, and luckily the weather was looking good, at least for the time being.

It was fun to watch the planes take off as we waited, and very reassuring to see how efficiently the airport is run.  The Tensing Hillary airport, the one we’d be landing at in Lukla, is considered to be one of (if not the) most dangerous airports in the world. This was a fact that I was trying my very best not to think about.  Instead, I focused my attention on the excitement of our impending trek.

Soon PG retrieved us from the rooftop, and led us down to the check in desk of the airport, where we had to have our luggage weighed before we could get tickets. This was a chaotic process. There were so many piles of bags lying around, then we had to lift ours up and pass them along just to get them within spitting distance of the scales. In the end, the ten kilo “limit” on our duffels turned out to be more of a suggestion than a hard rule, but the five kilo limit on our day packs was strictly enforced.

Once our bags were approved, we got our tickets, went through security, and then settled down in the airport’s terminal to wait some more. We waited. And waited. And then for a change of pace, we stood up while we waited. Just when it was nearly our turn, PG gathered us all together and told us we were going to leave the airport to get lunch. The weather had taken a turn for the worse up in Lukla, and all planes were grounded until another window opened up.

We ate Dhal Bhat for lunch at a nearby restaurant, trying to hold out hope that we might still make it to Lukla before the day was over. But after a few more hours, it became clear that we’d be spending another night in Manthali. We still had to stick near the airport just in case, but with our chances low, we all decided to go on a short walk.

We walked over to a nearby bridge with a beautiful river view, and all the while, blazing hot sunlight beat down on us. I knew there would be warm weather on our trek, but I hadn’t prepared well for the tropical temperatures of Manthali because I wasn’t expecting to be there for very long. It didn’t take much time for us to turn back to the airport just to get out of the intense sunlight.

By the time we made it back, there was no hope left of getting a flight that day. So we gathered our things and walked to a new teahouse, where we would spend the night. Along the way, I worried about the idea that I was sweating in my clothes already before we’d even started trekking. I’d only brought a few t-shirts and pairs of hiking pants with me, and the idea of getting them dirty this early was stressful. Looking back, this seems a little silly. After all, my clothes were going to get dirty, and they were going to smell bad, which day it happened was inconsequential.

It turned out that we would be staying in a tent camp for the night. This place served buffet meals, and even had a swimming pool, which I would have happily used except I didn’t have a bathing suit with me. We all had time to shower before dinner, and after we were done eating, we settled in for the night.

The next morning, things were looking up. We were almost guaranteed a flight today because we were only second in line for Tara Air. As we walked back to the airport, PG recommended that we try to get seats on the left side of the plane for the best views. This time, we checked in for our flight right when we arrived at the airport. Less than an hour later, we got to go out into the tarmac to board our flight!

The plane’s engines drowned out all other noise as we waited at the front of the line to officially start our journey into the Himalayas. This was probably the moment where I should have been feeling nervous about going on such a dangerous flight, but I was too excited for fear.

I was the first passenger onto the plane, and I grabbed the seat on the left just behind the cockpit. We all settled in, and I eagerly watched our pilots operating the plane’s controls as we lumbered along the runway and took off into the air. The little plane was surprisingly steady as we soared over the river and up up up, higher into the mountains.

The scenery outside of my window grew ever more majestic until we flew straight into a small cloud that blotted out the view. When we emerged on the other side, we could see majestic, snow-capped peaks, grander than any mountain I’d ever seen before.

Unshed tears burned behind my eyes. I couldn’t believe that finally, after a lifetime of dreaming of this, and months of training, I was actually looking out of my window at the Himalayas. The moment felt surreal, and my eagerness to start hiking mounted with the exhilaration of seeing the mountains for the first time.

A few minutes later, a runway came into view through the cockpit, and my stomach did a flip. I knew that this would be the riskiest moment of the flight. The runway of Lukla’s Tenzing-Hillary Airport is built on a hill. It has to be because it’s so short that planes wouldn’t be able to stop in time (or take off in time for that matter) without the slope to slow them down. At the end of the short runway is a vertical wall. There is no room for error with this landing. The planes wheels hit the runway, and I clutched my armrests as the plane shuddered to a halt with plenty of room to spare.

We’d made it. I let out a relieved breath as we deplaned and stepped onto the tarmac of one the most infamous airports in the world. I felt like I’d just survived the first major rite of passage of the Everest Base Camp trek. And now it was finally time to start hiking! More planes took off from the runway as we grouped up and started walking towards the village of Lukla. Our adventure had officially begun!

You can see more details of this amazing destination on my YouTube channel!