Arrival Kathmandu

We had a couple of hours stopover in Doha (about the most exciting thing at that airport is the costa coffee) and whilst the flight to Doha was only so so full, the one to Katmandu was jam packed. 90% men of which 85% were Nepali and had clearly not flown much to ever (queuing a challenge, lots of fiddling with seat belts, locking of loos etc but thankfully no phones on speaker so snoozing was a real option, gratefully taken). Obviously most of them working on construction projects in Qatar likely for an absolute pittance and now en route home to deliver the dosh to the wife and do it all again. Gives a lot of perspective...

Once in KTM we were met by "our man" Rajan, sorted with local SIM card, taken to hotel (the really charming Varja on the other side to the Thamel area. Whilst the raddisson from previous trips had been functional and.."fine" it was corporate-y and devoid of any charm, which the Varja has heaps of. Thanks Henry for that tip.

A word on Henry. Around 55, Scottish and Jan's expedition leader. He's been doing (read "running") Everest base camp for all expeditions for 23 years. He supplies all the oxygen for all expeditions, was in London recently to buy 10km of rope (rope colour on the mountain this year is black) and some 50 (!!) ladders and collect various duffel bags from members of his expedition which will (hopefully!) meet us on arrival at base camp (including one for Jan containing the high altitude essentials as well as spare toothpaste, sun screen, body rocket fuel (= electrolyte powder) and lots and lots of down layers (extra sleeping bag, down trousers, down booties etc)). The 50 ladders will double as bridges over the crevasses at the khumbu ice fall. Henry is also known apparently as "mother Hen" and is already en route to base camp where we will connect with him. He'll spend the entire April and May at base camp and control operations from there. He's also so marvellously connected in KTM and for the flights to Lukla "his dude" here this morning sorted us in no time for flight tickets (and tea!) so we're up and ready to go. And have been since 5:30am local time (hotel pick up was at 4:30.... did we hear mutterings of glamping...?).

Except that Lukla airport is closed and will not open for a bit. Apparently our flight should be leaving around 7:30 (instead of the planned 6:15 which is frankly nothing compared to the delays we are used to from heathrow...!)

The buzz is fantastic: it being prime trekking season we are certainly not the only "fat westerners" here and quite a few trekking and climbing teams are readily identifiable. Lots of brand new gear and wonderfully dust free. In particular there is one group where most of the men are already wearing their heavy duty summit shoes (not heavy duty enough for Everest though so we don't expect to see them again at base camp and beyond... Likely something like Ama Dablam (6868m which we will pass en route and maybe have an acclimatisation hike to its base camp (yes yes yes there will be photos)).

Now time for "the week" (great cover of George Osbore as a bum on a park bench with tag line re broke Britain). Fingers crossed we'll be on a little jetter in 45 mins.

Just heard though cloud cover in Lukla too thick so now looking more like 9am departure. Still comparable to heathrow waiting times....