I Take a Mountain Flight to Everest

Bhim arrived at my hotel at 5:30 a.m. with a taxi and we went out to the airport where I was to take the mountain flight to Everest. I was a little nervous. Yesterday I had considered asking Bhim not to buy the ticket; however, I did not come to Nepal to back out of the experiences that had drawn me here in the first place! Air travel, like ground travel, is comparatively dangerous in Nepal. Just a week or so before I left the States, a plane crashed up in the mountains, and not too long ago one of the Everest flights crashed into a mountainside on the way back to the airport. Both crashes resulted in no survivors. They never fly the small planes after dark and they avoid flying in bad weather. When foggy, stormy conditions suddenly move in, flying can be pretty dicey. But thankfully today the sky was bright blue with lots of sunshine, and I felt confident and excited and was looking forward to the flight.

          I waited in the terminal until my Yeti Airline flight was announced and then walked out to the bus that was to take me and my fellow passengers to the plane. All planes — from the largest jets to the smallest planes — are boarded by climbing up outside stairs.

         Once on board the bus we had another wait of several minutes. Looking around at my fellow passengers — about 19 of them — I realized I was the only Norte Americano on the flight. All of the other people were from Argentina and, my, they were a jolly bunch! Their guide had a video camera and he recorded all of the experience. A woman my age sat next to me and told me in very broken English of her driving from Argentina to Alaska, where she had lived for a period of time.

          A bag of coffee candies was passed around and some was offered to me and then the group began to clap and chant "Ev-er-est! Ev-er-est! Ev-er-est!" The guide indicated to me that I should join in the chanting and so I did and he filmed me, clapping and chanting along with the rest of the crowd. And then everyone spontaneously broke into song — all singing and leaning together from side to side as they sang.

          We were finally taken to our plane and a sweet Nepali woman with a long black dress and a long apron with a striped, folk design greeted us.

I was in seat 2-C, right in front. As was per usual on these flights, only the window seats were filled so everyone had a window view.  I was sitting on the right side of the plane, in front. The folks on the other side of the aisle had the mountain view all the way up and those of us on my side had it all the way back. We were given a map which showed the locations and names of the peaks and the stewardess constantly went up and down the aisle and helped each one of us identify what we were seeing at any given point.

The flight path was all along the mountain range of about 20 or 30 named peaks. Of the many thousands of mountain peaks in Nepal, only about 1,300 have been named. It was a real "high" in more than one sense of the word. The sky was a beautiful bright blue and the snow-capped mountain tops glistened white. I felt happiness and excitement flying along the tallest peaks in the world.

When we got close to Everest I began to make what I thought was a longish movie on my camera; however, it turned out to only be a few seconds long. Bummer dude! Seriously, this is THE one thing I should have had a movie of! Well I'll just have to be content to have had the experience and to carry the memory of it with me. I've seen Everest!!!