Himalaya Hijinx #2

I’ve got out of bed plenty of times at a time with a “4” in front of it, mostly in the am. When you spend a lot of your working years travelling for a living, staggering to an airport at an ungodly hour, sometimes hung-over, to make a flight that will get you to a scheduled meeting is unavoidable. But I don’t think I’ve ever done it twice in three days. We had a flight to Sydney to catch on Tuesday and today, Thursday, we have a crack of dawn flight to Everest and back provided the weather clears.

Well that was a major disappointment. We took off, ascended into the weather then turned around and went back. I don’t care how good your radar is, flying blind at the Himalayas is not something I relished. It was bad enough that the highest mountains in the world were in the same (small) country, let alone the same neighbourhood so the disappointment was real but somewhat muted. Apparently we’ll try again tomorrow.

We were in the air for about half an hour and didn’t see a thing other than whiteness from about a minute into the flight. As far as pointless exercises go, that’s up there with me trying to get a tan (I have a viking’s complexion). A shame also because two flights were combined so we were on an 80 seater (everyone gets a window) rather than the usual 16 seater. You’d rather be aloft in inclement weather in a big plane than a little one.

The rain this morning, when we returned to planet earth was of biblical proportions. I asked our guide if it was the tail-end of the monsoon. He said the monsoon had finished. This was just bad weather. To which he added the all-encompassing comment “climate change”. As it is only day 2, I decided not to tell him I worked in the coal industry. And as we all know, if Australia would only close its coal industry, there would be no more bush fires or droughts or floods in Australia and the Great Barrier Reef would double in size and you’d be able to see its colours from space…or something. So if only Nepal’s neighbour to the south would stop burning coal there would be no more rain in October, the month we were told (by all the best guide books) was the best one to visit this country.

I thought this place would be quite similar to India, but it isn’t apart from the traffic (they have traffic lights but don’t bother to turn them on), some of the food, the preponderance of Hindus and, it has to be said, the place is a bit untidy. But the buildings are a veritable riot of colour unlike in India, walking the streets is a somewhat more private and relaxing affair (apart from the traffic) and there are no cows (or elephants) on the streets. Not an exhaustive list I’ll grant you, but take my word for it. Oh, and the two places smell the same. I’m not going to attempt to deconstruct that.

But one thing I was never able to achieve in all of the times I went to India was meet a real live God. The CB and I did that today. And we have the photographic evidence to prove it. More later.