Back To Kathmandu

April 11th, 2010 8:46am - Posted By: Brittany

 April 11, 2010.   Today we fly out of Lukla and head back to Kathmandu.  It felt so wonderful to not put on my hiking pants this morning and just put on my comfy yoga pants.  Yay!!!!  My pants are so warn and dirty, they could walk by themselves at this point and kill anything in their way with their smell.  ;)

We finish packing since our yak bags need to be ready by 6:30 for airport check in.  MC and Maresh knock on the door with morning tea just like normal.  But today they both sport huge smiles and are excited to see Tyson.  For the first time, instead of Sir, they all him Brother.  They ask how he is feeling and ask if he had sweet dreams.  Then they laugh.  I guess that Roxy really brought them closer!  It was very sweet.  Too bad you can’t have some booze higher up on the trail to break the ice. 

 We headed down for our last breakfast with Deana and Taru.  We are on the first batch of flights, so we just have to wait for the plane to come in and then we’ll jump on and take off.  Our Sherpas Pemba, Mane and Dawa come in and tell us that the plane has left Kathmandu so we should head over to the airport.  Outside we stop and they present us with off white satin scarves.  This is a traditional Nepali way of saying goodbye and wishing us luck.  We all say goodbye and cross the road to the airport.  It was quite sad saying bye to them, they truly were our support and guides for the whole trek. 

 Check in and security at the airport consists of a line for men and one for women where they ask if you have any knives or scissors, then briefly look through your bag.  Then you go and wait in a room that opens right out to the runway.  Now you just wait for our flight to show up.  We are on the fourth Tara Air plane in the first batch.  After about 1.5 hours, a few planes and 2 helicopters, our plane lands.  We go out, and file into the plane.  Tyson, Deana and I are in the front, pretty much sitting in the pilots’ laps.  The Lukla runway is incredibly short and is considered one of the most dangerous in the world.  If you think about it, you’re landing on the side of a mountain.  So, yeah, there’s not a lot of room.  The way a plane takes off is to go down the runway, as in down hill.  The propellors turn on and get to full speed.  Then we start rolling down hill.  It feels just like a roller coaster.  We go, go, go, my stomach sinking, and then right at the end we take off and are flying in between the Himalayan mountains.  Crazy!  The flight lasts about 45 min and next thing you know, we’re in Kathmandu, surrounded by cars and smog and honks and people.  The plane lands and the bus picks us up on the tarmac.  Then it dumps us off pretty much in the airport parking lot.  Tyson and my bags don’t make it, so we’ll have to make due for a few hours.  Good thing we left a bag at the Yak & Yeti with clean clothes!

We get to the hotel and it just is a whole other world.  It seems so lavish compared to where we’ve been.  We get our rooms and are all so excited take showers and put on truly clean clothes.  Deana has a lunch spot all picked out for us.  We meet at noon and get into a taxi.  We head in the Thamal, the once foreigner area of Kathmandu.  The streets are crazy: no real rules, cars, bikes, walkers, rickshaws, motorcycles, dogs everywhere.  People drive pretty much where ever they want.  The streets of Thamal are tiny and narrow, but everyone still drives there.  We get out and Deana shows us a good internet shop for later and a cheap but good laundry service.  We’ll have to drop off ours once our bags arrive.  

Lunch is in a posh, Western restaurant called The Roadhouse.  It is so AMAZING!!!  To have western food after our trek is like heaven.  We order bruschetta and nachos to start, then we all get huge fresh salads, followed by wood oven pizza.  YUMMMMMM!!!   The salads were soooo good. You just don’t realize what you’re missing in fresh produce until you can’t eat any for two weeks.  The nachos tasted like home and the pizza was delicious.  We all got dessert and felt fully satisfied.  Deana warned us that we’ll be pretty ravenous for the next few days as our bodies adjust.  

Kathmandu is very hot and humid.  It is so strange to go from freezing cold to shorts and flip flops.  But here we are and we’re ready for a break.  I’m happy to experience Kathmandu, but also just want to veg.  Deana shows us around Thamal some more, then Tyson and I get a taxi back to the hotel.  No price is set in Kathmandu, so when you get a cab, you have to negotiate the price.  I’m not a fan of this, but you gotta do it. 

When we got back, our bags had arrived.  We sorted our dirty laundry and then took a nap.  At 6 we met Taru for dinner.  We dropped our laundry and then headed to the Rum Doodle.  This is a grill that is famous for climbers to go to after their expeditions.  People fill out a cardboard Yeti foot and they get hung on the wall.  Sort of like the napkins at Beau Jo’s.  The food was really good.  I got mashed potatoes, Tyson got meat lasagne.  The chips and salsa were so yummy.  The salsa was comparable to ours at home.  However, the service was lacking.  They wouldn’t give us a foot at first, but we finally got a server who would bring us one.  The three of us drew a beautiful scene and got our foot hung from the ceiling.  Then we all called it a night after some Everest Beers and hit the hay. 

Our room was nice, but the city has major energy problems.  So, the hotel loses power every couple of hours.  They have a generator, but that only powers some of the hotel.  So, throughout the night the AC would turn off, making it quite hot to sleep.  Man, this trip!  It’s either too hot or too cold!  Welcome to the third world!  But good sleep in a huge bed, now to just relax!

Posted in: Nepal 2010

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