The start of the trek….

25th -27th of December

Christmas night we headed out to try and find the Nepali Chulo restaurant following the minute instruction printed on our business cards… however we luckily ran into “our friend” Barga who out the front of the Northfield Café and he offered to give us a lift. Like most Nepali’s he drove a small car, as larger cars make it virtually impossible to maneuver around the small narrow streets especially in Thamel, and we managed to make it there incident free.

The Nepali Chulo restaurant is housed in a 900 year old Rana palace. The exterior and interior of the place has been lovingly restored and is just amazing. Walking in, we had to remove our shoes and we had another red dot placed upon our foreheads (for free this time) before making our way to sit at our traditional table (aka on the floor).

We started off with a few serves of Nepali rice wine, which I must say really warms up the body VERY QUICKLY… they have this unique way of pouring from a tea pot like vessel. Starting low in the clay cup and then quickly going higher before flicking their wrists to stop the flow at just the right moment… before the cup overflows. As the Nepali rice wine came quick and often & were being intermingled with some sort of run type cocktail it wasn’t very long till we were a very merry group… which would explain why Alicia and myself had a good go at the traditional Tibetan dancing… needless to say we weren’t very good – but it was all in good fun. The food was traditional Nepali and was very good… especially as we had multiple servings of momos(!!) which we all currently LOVE!!!

Anyways, after a lovely evening we returned back to our hotel thanks to Barga… who kinda made a move on Alicia and was quickly rejected… (Alicia: Not even while I was drunk! EW!)… so I think that’ll be the last we see of him (Alicia: hopefully!)

Boxing day was a pretty quiet affair – we met up with our trekking group for the first time. While there are 12 of us on the trip only 10 of us were there for the initial briefing (the other 2 were unfortunately stranded in China for a 70 hour layover!!) The briefing was pretty standard and we met our group leader Raj as well. Afterwards we headed to the Kathmandu Environmental Education Program (or K.E.E.P.) – which ended up being a bit of a bust as the guy who normally ran it was sick… so we pretty much just watched on what they do instead. We decided to go out for dinner with Raj and most of the group that evening and headed to the K-too Steakhouse, which wasn’t too bad from memory & it was here we met the last two members of the group… leaving us with:

• Peter, Mandy, Torbs & Joel from SA/ACT
• Amy & Mark from BrisVegas
• Ash from Sydney (who is friends with one of Alicia’s good friend’s Jess… small world!)
• Kevin & Kasia (the token Americans)
• & of course… Me, Alicia & KTP

It was an early night as we had to be up and ready to go by 6:30am(!!) for our 7:45am flight to Lukla. After arriving @ the domestic airport and heading through the ‘highly sophisticated’ *cough cough* security measures we ended up having to waiting for 4 hours(!!) for our flight as we were fogged in.
A variety of measures were undertaken to alleviate the boredom & it gave us all a good chance to finally meet and get to know the rest of the group – especially as we were about every moment of the next two weeks together!!

Eventually we were given the all the clear to leave and we headed via bus to our lil Yeti Airlines twin otter plane to Lukla. We had one flight attendant, whose main job is to close the door and had out Carmel candy and cotton wool (for earplugs!!) at the beginning of the flight! We were told we should get fantastic views of the Himalayas from one side… but no one would tell us which side it was!! Katie and I had the single seats on the left (underneath the wing)… and as we finally broke through the clouds it was obvious we had chosen the ‘right’ side and the majesty of the Himalayas was clearly apparent. As you can imagine the flashes started going off straight away and I have some gorgeous pictures (which I swear I will post eventually).

The entire plane trip was a lil nerve wrecking at part – especially as you get closer to Lukla as there are some very small passages that have to be negotiated… and the runway @ Lukla is crazily short (200 m… maybe?) on the side of a FRIGGIN MOUNTAIN!!! Apparently you have to have at least 7 – 8 years experience before you are allowed to land plane there… which is definitely a good thing!!
After alighting from the plane we quickly made our way to a tea house for lunch (which took an hour or two to arrive) before finally setting off on the start of our trek.

The first day was a ‘gentle introduction’ of 3 hours to Phakding (pronounced Fakding). It wasn’t too bad… but I’m pretty sure that was because it was mainly downhill!! The tea house we are staying in had small little separate rooms (with our own toilets… luxury!) made out of plywood boards… it’s cold but not too bad so far. Dinner wasn’t too bad either – so…. So far so good! Tomorrow will definitely be a different matter as we change elevation by over 800m to Namche Bazzar… Man that’s a lot of climbing!! Fun!

Brennan (Alicia & KTP)