I arrived in Kathmandu on the 5th of feb at
4.30pm to a beautiful sunny day and a temperature of 9•C. After an hour of
waiting in the hectic baggage claim area, finally the first bag from our plane
arrived! A good half hour after that, a man came with a list, checked my
luggage tag, and informed me that my bag had been taken off the plane in Muscat
(Oman) along with 25 others.. A good 2 hours after landing I finally got out of
the airport, where I found a man with a sign for Ms Florence. Exhausted, I
headed straight to the hotel for a room service dinner and sleep.
The following day, I went to Karnali
Excursions to finalise my plans in Nepal. They were absolutely fantastic and I
would recommend them to anybody that comes to Nepal. kindly, they then
accompanied me to one of the charity's offices, which I thought were the
organisation that had arranged my placements. As this was not the case, they
were rather confused when a woman turned up to their offices and told them they
were volunteering in one of their schools. At this point I was very nervous
that I'd end up in Khumjung with no one to help me. Fortunately, John (the
coordinator of my trip) got in touch with the details of the person I should
contact from another organisation whom had sorted my placement. After a few
phonecalls and emails, all was back on track, and Khumjung school were aware of
my arrival on the 12th of Feb. Phewwww!
I spent the rest of the afternoon waiting
to hear whether my luggage had arrived, by 6.30pm there was still no
news so I decided to head over to Thamel to join Chulie and Maxine for drinks
and dinner at their hotel. At 8.30pm I received a call informing me
that my luggage had arrived in Kathmandu airport! Yey!
The next day, I went to collect my luggage and
check into my new hotel in Thamel. I then went to meet the person who organised
my school placement as well as the head teacher of the school, which was
incredibly helpful as he was able to give me the details of my involvement in
the school, and reassured me that the village was preparing for my arrival! I
spent the rest of the day buying any missing gear that I needed and taking in
the streets of Thamel!
Unfortunately I caught a bad cold so spent my
last day in Kathmandu trying to recover before heading over to the Himalayas. I
then went to town to take some cash out for my trip, of course none of the ATM
machines worked for my cards so I ended up spending a good 2 hours looking for
a bank that could help. Eventually I did manage to get a small amount of money
out (using my credit card!!), then returned back to my hotel to get ready for
my departure the next morning.
I woke up at 4.45am to enjoy my last
hot shower before heading over to the airport. The tiny domestic departure
terminal had just opened when I got there so it was incredibly fast to check in
and get through. By 7.00am my flight was called to board the plane. I
sat down next to the emergency exit, and I was asked to not touch the door “in
case it opens” - very reassuring! A few minutes later the ‘air hostess’
squeezed past the few chairs on the plane to give us all some cotton wool for
our ears and a sweet. Eventually, the co-pilot arrived, jumped over a few seats
to squeeze into his position in front of the plane and we were off! There I was,
praying that the flight would be ok as we started down the runway, suddenly the
pilot hit the brakes and returned to the parking bay to inform us that Lukla
airport (the destination) was closed. We waited about half an hour for the
airport to re-open, and then we were off again. The flight was spectacular,
going over Kathmandu and mountain villages as well as flying past the
Himalayas. To my relief, the landing was absolutely fine, despite being 'the
most dangerous airport in the world'. Once I found my Sherpa and got my bag, we
set off on our four-day trek up to Khumjung. By 11.00am, we'd already
arrived at our first stop: Phakding, at 2650m above sea level. I had the rest
of the day to relax, and meet a few hikers returning from Everest Base Camp.
The evening was very cold, but we had a fire in the living room that was lovely
and my sleeping bag was fantastic so I didn't suffer through the night
either.
Wednesday was an acclimatisation day, as we'd gained a lot of height coming to Namche. I've been told that I need to 'climb high and sleep low' to avoid altitude sickness, so we went up to just above 3800m in the morning to get some views over the mountains, (including a very clear view of Everest) before coming back down to spend the day relaxing in Namche.
The next day I set off for Khumjung, the village where I’ll be spending the next month teaching…
