Flight to Lukla March 31, 2012
After two days of breathing the pollution and absorbing the noise, it was time to hit the trail.a
We were rolling by 4:30, debut I was still the last person out with my duffle bag. Head guide Eric Simonson’s eyes bugged out since the bags had left 45 minutes prior.
I had become that guy…
At the airport, things moved with third-world smoothness and we were loaded on to a Twin Otter plane headed for Lukla. I kept telling myself not to look at the interior as a way to gauge how well the plane had been maintained. Or we would be in a lot of trouble.
The flight went off with the accustomed third world smoothness. It wasn’t until I saw the runway that we realized that life in Nepal was not only efficient, but effective. Looking through the cockpit windshield, you could see the airport – built into the side of hill dead- ending into stone wall. The strip itself, was a wide swath that angled up at a 10-15 degree slope to aid in slowing down landing planes, as well as help launch planes on take off. At an elevation of 9372 feet, the air is thin for planes (and humans) requiring a bit more umph for old, overloaded and underpowered planes.
It was still unnerving though you knew that this had been done at least 20 times or so without incident.
A Life Climbing Mountains 