Upon meeting Mr Rajan of Earthbound Expeditions, who are a local trek organisation that a lot of the bigger international tour companies contract through, we were required to sign the obligatory life waiver forms just incase there was any last minute doubts to the safety of our mountain walk.
We were then introduced to our guide 'Sundys' (or at least thats what we heard and proceeded to call him from then onwards) and were bundled into a mini van for a walking tour of Nepals Buddhist historical sights.
The day was filled with giant temples, ancient prayer rituals and even the famous burning of bodies in the river which we were lucky enough to witness whilst walking by. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting experience however we were very mindful that we had not finished gearing up for the trek and the tour was quickly looking like dragging on until the evening. Much to the tour operators disgust we bailed in a taxi at 3:30pm to sneak in a few last minute purchases.
Very early the following morning we were picked up for our flight to Lukla, the most dangerous airport in the world. It turns out the early morning departure was a good thing as many flights get cancelled after the first few due to weather concerns.
I had googled up the airport at Lukla which only has a 450m incline landing strip built in to the side of the mountain and leaves no room for pilot error as the end is a big solid rock face. The planes have to throw the propellers in to reverse before touching down and gun the engines if they want any chance of stopping in time. Certainly not a place you would want a last minute gush of wind and explains why so many flights are cancelled due to bad weather (check out the below video).
We then settled in to a local mountain cafe for some coffee and a quick altitude adjustment.
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