The trail dropped down toward the Dudh Koshi river and followed it through a narrow gorge. The gentle, flower-lined paths from the morning were gone. This was raw terrain: boulders, loose dirt, the river roaring a few meters below, and a trail carved into the side of a cliff.
Single file along the gorge. The river doesn’t care about your schedule.
Parts of the trail had been washed out by landslides. We passed through active construction zones where workers were rebuilding the path by hand, hauling in cement by porter and laying new stone steps into the hillside. No machinery. No trucks. Just people with rocks and determination.
Trail maintenance. Every step on this path was placed by someone’s hands.Pokin crossing a log bridge. Manoj right behind her, keeping things bistari.
The Hillary Suspension Bridge sits about 125 meters (410 feet) above the Dudh Koshi river. Named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who funded infrastructure projects across the Khumbu after his 1953 Everest summit, the bridge is a long, swaying span of steel cable and wire mesh over a gorge that you really don’t want to look down into.
So naturally I looked down.
125 meters above the river. I’m fine. This is fine.Nicholas at the bridge entrance. The prayer flag draped over his pack makes him look like a budget superhero.On the bridge. The higher one is visible in the background. Yes, there are two.
The bridge sways. Not dramatically, not dangerously, but enough that your brain reminds you where you are. The metal grate floor lets you see straight through to the river below. Porters with enormous loads cross it like they’re walking to the kitchen. Yaks cross it. It’s fine. It’s all fine.
After the bridge, the trail does something cruel: it goes straight up. And it doesn’t stop going up for roughly 600 meters of elevation gain over the next two to three hours.
This is the section every EBC trekker warns you about. The relentless staircase to Namche Bazaar. Stone steps carved into the mountainside, switchbacking through pine and rhododendron forest, with the gorge dropping away behind you and the fog rolling in from above.
Both bridges visible behind us. The higher one is the one we’re about to cross. The lower one is for people who want a slightly less terrifying experience.Smiling through it. The stairs behind Manoj tell the real story.
The fog came in hard during the climb. The valley below disappeared. The mountains above disappeared. It was just stairs, breathing, and the sound of trekking poles hitting stone.
Somewhere under all that fog is the river we crossed an hour ago. Probably.Yak barriers. Because apparently yaks need to be told where they can and can’t go. They do not read signs.Rest stop in the pines. Everyone’s still smiling. Give it another 200 meters of elevation.
Nicholas was supposed to be taking it easy. He was not taking it easy. He has one speed, and it isn’t bistari. Pokin, who had been ahead of us since morning, was now somewhere behind, and every time she caught sight of Nicholas she’d yell at him to slow down. He would slow down for approximately thirty seconds before his legs forgot the instruction.
The gate to Namche Bazaar. We made it. Everything hurts.The whole crew at the Namche gate. The fog behind us is hiding seven hours of trail we never want to see again.Through the gate. Into the fog. Somewhere in there is a hot shower.
Namche Bazaar sits at 3,438 meters in a natural amphitheater carved into the mountainside. It’s the last real town before the high altitude stops, and it has things that suddenly feel like luxuries: restaurants, shops, Wi-Fi that occasionally works, and hot showers. The group was very excited about the hot showers.
We’d been hiking for about seven hours. Nicholas and Pokin had done it while recovering from fevers. Everyone else had done it while carrying the knowledge that this was only day two.
The hotel was nice. The showers were hot. The beds were horizontal. After the day we’d had, that was enough.
The drink stop at the cafe was exactly what we needed. Sit down, breathe, pretend the last few hours of stairs didn’t happen.
The crew at the drink stop. I got the best seat. As usual.
The espresso signs on the wall were aspirational at best, but it was a place to sit and that was enough.
Once everyone regrouped, the pace picked up. The problem was that Nicholas doesn’t really have a slow setting. He was supposed to be taking it easy. He was sick. Pokin knew this. So for the rest of the day, every time Nicholas passed her on the trail, she’d yell “bistari! bistari!” at him, which is Nepali for “slowly, slowly.”
It did not work. He kept going fast. She kept yelling. This became the soundtrack of the day.
NAMCHE. With an arrow. In case you forgot where you were going while climbing the 400th staircase.
The trail between the lodge and the national park entrance is more of the same: stone stairs, steep inclines, and occasional painted boulders reminding you that Namche is still ahead. Not behind you. Ahead. Uphill.
Trail markers come in many forms. This one was a trash can. Very practical.Mani stone photo op. There’s a sign behind us for the Utche Choling Monastery, which was apparently a five-minute walk away. We did not take the five-minute walk. We had enough walking.
Sagarmatha National Park. The world’s highest national park. And now, the world’s highest park with a bear in it.
Sagarmatha National Park was established in 1976 and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. It covers 1,148 square kilometers and ranges from 2,845 meters at Jorsalle, where we were standing, all the way up to 8,849 meters at the summit of Everest. That’s a park that starts at “uncomfortable” and ends at “death zone.”
“Sagarmatha” is the Nepali name for Everest. It means “forehead of the sky.” Which is more poetic than “really tall mountain that people keep trying to climb,” but means the same thing.
Manoj had gone ahead and handled all the permits before we arrived. He’d taken our passports earlier that morning and sorted everything at the checkpoint. So our grand entrance into a UNESCO World Heritage Site was just… walking through a gate. Nobody checked anything. Nobody stopped us.
The full squad at the gate. D.B. already in celebration mode. The rest of us still processing the stairs.Officially inside the park. Behind us, the ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ boulder. Ahead of us, several more hours of complaining.
Past the gate, the trail continued through Jorsalle with more mani walls, prayer wheels, and painted murals than we’d seen all morning. The whole area felt more deliberately sacred, like someone had decided that the entrance to a national park containing Everest should look the part.
Three Buddhas and six prayer wheels. The art up here puts most museums to shame.D.B. Double thumbs up. Apparently the horse behind him is the same one a friend of ours rented when he couldn’t make it to base camp on a previous trek. Small world up here.
Jorsalle Guest House. Where ‘Welcome’ is one word and two words at the same time.
We stopped at the Jorsalle Guest House for lunch. The kind of place where the Snickers bars in the display case cost more than the dal bhat, and the dal bhat is what you should be ordering anyway.
Nicholas at the lunch table. Tired but alive. Same.
Pokin ordered momos. She’s been ordering momos at every stop since Kathmandu. Steamed dumplings stuffed with vegetables or meat, served with a spicy sauce. She’s already scouting ahead for places that might have boiled ones, because apparently the momo quest has levels.
Nicholas got dal bhat. Rice, lentil soup, vegetable curry, greens. The standard trekker fuel that you’ll eat approximately 47 more times before this trip is over. It was filling. It was warm. It was exactly what you need when you’re sick and have been climbing stairs for five hours.
Pokin with her momos. Nicholas with his dal bhat. Both doing significantly better than yesterday.Namaste from the whole crew. Prayer flags on the ceiling. Momos in our stomachs. Namche still ahead.
Lunch was good. The group was together. The fevers were holding off. And the hardest part of the day was still waiting for us somewhere up the mountain.
7 AM in Phakding. Today’s mission: hike to Namche Bazaar. Seven hours of uphill. While sick.
Contemplating the hike ahead. Or possibly going back to sleep.
Nicholas and Pokin woke up feeling better. Not good. But better. The fevers had retreated enough that the plan still held: get to Namche, don’t die, use the two built-in rest days there to actually recover.
The lodge put out a breakfast spread that had no business being this good at 2,610 meters in a village accessible only by foot.
Eggs, potatoes, apples, cheese. In the Himalayas. We were pretty nervous about the food up here, but this seemed safe enough.Nicholas putting on the brave face. The hoodie was already up. Not a great sign for 7 AM.
We’d been warned not to eat meat in the Sagarmatha region. No refrigeration up here. Everything gets hauled in by yak, and cold chain logistics aren’t really a thing when your supply chain has hooves. Everyone acknowledged the warning and then made their own choices. I’m not naming names.
Pokin left first with Manoj, the assistant guide. She’s a slow hiker, and she knows it, so she gave herself a head start. Between already having partially collapsed lungs and now running a fever, she wasn’t going to be setting any speed records. The plan was simple: Pokin heads out early with Manoj, the rest of us catch up to her eventually.
There was just one problem. Manoj had introduced himself the night before, but Pokin is famously terrible at recognizing faces. As in, she has genuinely misidentified Nicholas on the trail before. Her own husband. So when Manoj started walking alongside her that morning, Pokin looked at this stranger following her through the Himalayas and told him, “I already have a guide.”
“Yes. Me,” said Manoj.
Pokin and Manoj, after she finally accepted he was, in fact, her guide.
Outside, the porters were already loading up the 3A Adventure duffel bags and heading out. Those bags weigh a significant fraction of a human being and these guys just strap them on and go.
The duffel shuffle. Our bags go up by porter. We go up by complaining.
The trail started gentle. Stone paths, green gates, and trees absolutely covered in pink blossoms. April in the Khumbu is spring, and everything that can bloom is blooming. For about twenty minutes it felt more like a garden walk than a Himalayan trek.
Then the stairs started.
Nicholas grabbed a few photos of just the two of us along the way, but we were with the main group the whole time. Perks of having long arms and a phone with a good front camera.
Nicholas in his full trail armor. Hood, mask, sunglasses. You could rob a teahouse in this outfit.
The mask wasn’t a fashion choice. The air quality on the trail is rough. Dust from the paths, pollution drifting up from the valleys, and two recovering lungs that didn’t need any more problems. Buffs, masks, and sunglasses were going to be standard equipment for the foreseeable future.
The Dudh Koshi valley opened up as we gained elevation. The glacial river cut through the bottom, pale green and fast, with mountains climbing on both sides into clouds. The scale of it is hard to describe. Everything is just… bigger than it should be. The trees are taller, the slopes are steeper, the sky is further away.
The trail passed through small settlements where the only constant was propane canisters lined up against every building. Red ones, stacked neatly, waiting for their turn to heat a teahouse or boil water. No pipelines up here. Everything arrives the same way we do: one step at a time.
The EBC trail has a traffic problem, and it’s not other trekkers.
Yak traffic. No horns. No turn signals. They do not care about you.
Yaks. Or more accurately, zopkyo, which are yak-cow hybrids, but nobody calls them that because “watch out for the zopkyo” doesn’t have the same energy. They come through in caravans, loaded with white sacks and blue crates, moving at whatever speed they feel like, and you get out of the way. Mountain side rule: stand on the uphill side of the trail. Getting nudged downhill by an animal carrying 80 kilograms of rice is not how you want your trek to end.
The universal EBC experience: pressing yourself against a stone wall while a parade of yaks ignores your existence.Personal space? The yaks have never heard of it.
I need to address something. I want a pet yak. Yaks are awesome. They’re huge, fluffy, unbothered by everything, and they live in the mountains. That’s basically my ideal roommate. Nicholas says we can’t have a yak at Bear Falls Resort. I say the HOA hasn’t specifically said we can’t.
Also, I want to ride one. I saw other trekkers riding horses (there’s literally a “Horses on Rent” sign on the trail) but nobody was renting yaks. This feels like a gap in the market.
Horses on Rent, but no Yaks on Rent. The Himalayas have a customer experience problem.
This man is carrying more weight than I will ever weigh in my entire existence.
The amount of weight these guys carry is absurd. Multiple duffel bags stacked and secured with a headstrap called a namlo, bent nearly double on stone stairs, moving faster than most trekkers with daypacks. Everything that exists in the Khumbu region got there on someone’s back or on the back of an animal. Every propane canister. Every mattress. Every bottle of Coke that costs 500 rupees (about $4 USD) at altitude. It all came up these same stairs.
Monjo. 2,835 meters. Cherry blossoms and prayer flags.
The trail passed through Monjo, where a sign for Mount Kailash Lodge marked the elevation at 2,835 meters. Cherry trees were in full white bloom over the stone paths. Prayer flags strung between buildings. If you ignored the altitude headache and the fact that every muscle below your knees was filing a complaint, it was actually quite pretty.
This is where we caught up to Pokin. She’d been waiting for us at the rest stop, having hiked the whole morning section with Manoj.
Pokin at Monjo. Waiting for us like she’d been there for hours. She probably had.
The trail is lined with mani walls, prayer wheels, and chortens (stupas). You’re supposed to pass them on the left, keeping the sacred object on your right. Nicholas explained this to me on day one and I’ve been very diligent about it. Mostly because the left side usually has more room to avoid yaks.
Nicholas saying hello to Manoj after catching up to Pokin’s group. Reunited at last.
D.B. is the lead guide from 3A Adventure. Manoj is the assistant guide who Pokin didn’t recognize. Together they’re managing five trekkers, a bear, a pile of duffel bags, and whatever logistical chaos the mountain throws at them. D.B. is the “okay, let’s go” type. Manoj is the “bistari, bistari” type, which is Nepali for “slowly, slowly,” which is advice most trekkers should take more seriously than they do. Good balance.
The settlements along the trail all look like they grew out of the mountain instead of being built on it. Stone walls, corrugated metal roofs in red and blue, wood-framed windows painted green. Everything is slightly worn and slightly beautiful.
Now back together as a full group, we continued on to the Mount Kailash Lodge for a proper drink stop. Water, tea, sitting down, and pretending we weren’t only a fraction of the way to Namche.
The mechanics finished. The door closed. The rotors spun up. And we lifted off from Lukla with no guide, no group, and a maintenance guy riding along to make sure nothing went wrong.
Just me, the pilot, a maintenance guy, and two sick humans. Totally normal.
Nicholas doing the ‘I’m fine’ face. He was not fine.
The flight to Phakding was short. A few minutes over the valley, dodging the same clouds we’d been fighting all day. The pilot found a landing spot behind a building and dropped toward it.
It was a circle of stones. Not a helipad. Not a paved surface. Not even cemented cobblestone. Just loose rocks arranged in a rough circle behind the Himalayan Sherpa Hospital. Not where I would choose to land a helicopter, but nobody asked me.
Landed. Alive. Standing on loose rocks next to a hospital, which felt appropriate given the fevers.
The mechanic swung the door open with the rotors still running. He had us jump out, then dragged our duffel bags onto the rocks. Then a 20-kilogram box of apples and pomegranates that D.B. had sent along for the trek. Then he slammed the door, gave a thumbs up, and took off. Not a single word spoken the entire time.
So there we were. Two sick trekkers and a bear, standing on a stone circle behind a hospital in a Himalayan valley, surrounded by duffel bags and a giant box of fruit, with absolutely no idea where our hotel was.
No guide. No group. No cell reception.
The Himalayan Sherpa Hospital. Where we landed. Not as a patient. Yet.This is where they landed a helicopter. On purpose.
We started hauling our 20-kilogram duffels (plus the fruit box) down a cobblestone path toward what looked like it might be a town. It was not a dignified entrance.
Hauling gear. The local guy had it handled. We did not.
Luckily, someone found us before we wandered too far. The owner of the Sherpa Shangri-La had gotten a call from D.B. and came out to collect us. Turns out our hotel was literally the next building over. We’d been dragging bags in the right direction by pure accident.
Home for the night. Duffels delivered. Fruit box somewhere behind us.
The lodge was genuinely nice. Not “nice for a remote mountain village” nice. Just nice. A cozy lounge with Himalayan panorama photos on the walls, a painted Tibetan cabinet, cushioned chairs, and that particular kind of quiet that only happens when you’re the only guests.
Nicholas in the lounge. Resting. Not gaming. That’s how you know he’s really sick.
Most flights to Lukla had been canceled that day because of the afternoon weather. Which meant most trekkers who were supposed to start their trek that day were still stuck in Kathmandu. Which meant Phakding was practically empty. We had the Sherpa Shangri-La almost entirely to ourselves.
Tea. Mask off. Attempting to feel human again.
Nicholas liked Phakding. It sat at 2,610 meters in the Dudh Koshi river valley, actually lower than Lukla, tucked between steep forested mountainsides. Quiet. Green. The kind of place where you could hear the river and not much else.
They napped. Hard. The kind of nap where you close your eyes at 3 PM and wake up to darkness and the sound of people arriving.
The rest of the group made it in after nightfall. Because our helicopter had been so late leaving Kathmandu, the hikers had started late too, and the three-hour hike from Lukla to Phakding stretched into the evening. Steve, Alice, and Po On arrived tired but healthy, which was more than Nicholas and Pokin could say.
Everyone had dinner together. First real group meal on the trek. First chance to compare notes on how the day had gone, which was mostly just everyone agreeing that today had been completely ridiculous.
Phakding was peaceful. The lodge was comfortable. The fevers were still there.
Tomorrow was the hike to Namche Bazaar. It’s the first real climb of the trek, a steep, relentless ascent that most guides describe as the toughest day of the first week. Not exactly what you want to tackle on day one of being sick.
Nicholas and Pokin talked about staying an extra night. More rest. More time to recover. But the plan had two nights built into Namche specifically for acclimatization, and those two days of rest would be there whether they arrived sick or healthy. Better to push through tomorrow and collapse in Namche than to fall behind the schedule and miss the rest days entirely.
So the plan held. Wake up early. Hike to Namche. Hope the fevers break somewhere between here and there.
Phakding was the kind of place you’d want to stay longer. But the mountain doesn’t wait, and neither did the itinerary.
They walked us across the lot to a helicopter. A Kailash helicopter. Tail number 9N-AJJ. The real deal. Whatever that guy at the counter had tried to pull, we were on the right aircraft.
9N-AJJ. Kailash Helicopter Services. The one we actually booked.
We loaded up fast. Headsets on. Doors closed.
Masked, medicated, headsets ready. Two people with fevers about to fly through the Himalayas. What could go wrong.
Nepal is entirely VFR. Visual Flight Rules. That means pilots fly by sight. No instrument approaches, no radar guidance, no flying through clouds. If you can’t see where you’re going, you don’t go.
We took off fast. After seven hours of waiting, we were airborne in seconds and immediately skimming over the mountaintops. The views were exactly what you’d expect from helicopter-level altitude over the Himalayan foothills. Valleys. Rivers. Terraced hillsides. Spectacular.
For about forty minutes.
Then we hit the Everest region, and the clouds came in thick.
This is what VFR-only looks like when the clouds close in. The pilot can see the clouds. The pilot cannot see through the clouds.
Our pilot started circling, trying to climb above the cloud layer that was rapidly building around us. Swirling white in every direction. He kept calling Lukla on the radio for a weather update, but the mountains were blocking the signal. No response. Just static, clouds, and a helicopter trying to find a gap.
We were getting boxed in.
This is why you fly at 6 AM and not 1 PM. Morning air is calm and clear. By afternoon, the sun has heated the valleys, thermals push moisture up the mountainsides, and cloud cover smothers everything. We were living the exact scenario we’d tried to avoid.
The pilot aborted. We thought he was turning back to Kathmandu. Then he veered hard to the right, dropped into the next valley, and there it was.
Tenzing-Hillary Airport. Elevation 2,860 meters. The runway is 527 meters long (most commercial runways are ten times that), angled uphill at a 12% gradient to help slow you down, with a sheer mountain wall on one end and a 600-meter cliff drop on the other. You fly into a narrow valley, bank left, and hope.
Fixed-wing planes have to commit. Once they’re in the approach, there’s no going around. Miss the runway and you’re in the mountain or off the cliff.
We looked at it from the helicopter and felt very good about our choice of transport.
The runway. One end is a mountain. The other end is a cliff. Pick your favorite.
We touched down on the helipad and piled out. The air was different up here. Cooler, thinner, and damp under a heavy cloud layer. Not exactly the sunny mountain welcome you see in the brochures.
Nicholas looking like he’s doing fine. Nicholas was not doing fine.
We’re here. We’re sick. We’re smiling anyway.
We had about thirty minutes on the ground while bags were unloaded and sorted. Enough time to walk around and see the runway up close. That mountain wall at the end of the strip? It’s even more intimidating from the ground.
Nicholas and Pokin were not doing well. The fevers hadn’t improved. The plan had been to hike three hours from Lukla to Phakding, the first stop on the trek. D.B. took one look at them and had a different idea.
The helicopter could take Nicholas and Pokin directly to Phakding. Skip the hike. Rest for the remainder of the day. The others would walk with D.B.
The whole crew at the Tenzing-Hillary Airport gate. Before the split.
So the group split. Steve, Alice, and Po On geared up to hike with D.B. Nicholas and Pokin would take the helicopter to Phakding.
While we’d been taking photos and sorting gear, the helicopter had been sitting on the pad. Three mechanics had climbed in, pulled out some of the instruments (possibly the radio), and started spraying things down with WD-40.
WD-40.
On the helicopter we were now supposed to fly in. Again.
Nicholas and Pokin climbed back into the freshly serviced aircraft. No guide this time. Just the pilot, two sick trekkers, a bear, and a maintenance guy who came along for the ride, apparently to make sure nothing fell apart mid-flight.
That’s the kind of detail that either reassures you or terrifies you. There is no in-between.
Onwards. To Phakding. In a helicopter held together by optimism and WD-40.
Remember how the last post ended with “hope for the best”?
Yeah. About that.
Nicholas and Pokin woke up with full-on fevers. Not “maybe it’s the pollution” sore throats anymore. Actual fevers. Two hours before a 6 AM helicopter flight to Lukla. The start of a twenty-two day trek through the highest mountains on Earth.
So much for wearing masks on every flight. So much for hand sanitizer. So much for skipping the temple visit to rest. The universe had other plans, and those plans involved being sick at the worst possible time.
They called D.B. to figure out options. Stay in Kathmandu and rest? That would mean canceling the flight, rebooking every tea house along the route (nearly impossible mid-season), and either splitting the group up or forcing everyone else to wait. Not great options when three other people are ready to go.
The decision: get to the airport, take the flight, take it easy on arrival, and reassess from Lukla. At least from there they wouldn’t need a second flight later.
Quick detour on how we even picked a helicopter company, because this matters for what happens next.
Pokin did what Pokin does: researched every operator flying the Kathmandu-to-Lukla route. And it turns out that flying to Lukla by fixed-wing plane is considered one of the most dangerous commercial flights in the world. The runway is short, sloped, carved into a mountainside, and ends in a cliff. The alternative is a 1 AM wakeup and a six-hour drive on Nepal’s roads, which frequently get washed out.
So helicopter is actually the safe option. But not all helicopter companies are equal.
Fishtail Air does a lot of high-altitude mountain rescues. Heroic work, but those rescue attempts carry a high fatality rate when they don’t succeed, and the numbers show it. Basecamp Helicopters had a recent fatality and was implicated in an Everest poisoning scam. Yes, a poisoning scam. On Everest. I’ll let that sink in.
Kalish was the only company Pokin could find that had never had a fatality. They were also the only helicopter to have successfully completed a rescue off the summit. So: Kalish. Done. Settled.
The night before departure, D.B. told us Kalish’s helicopters were stuck on other mountains and couldn’t make our 6 AM flight. Would we like to fly Fishtail or Basecamp instead?
Absolutely not.
So the 6 AM became a 10 AM.
Now, here’s the thing about a 10 AM flight to Lukla versus a 6 AM flight. Mountain weather follows a predictable daily cycle. Early morning, the air is calm, cold, and stable. As the sun heats the ground, thermals build, clouds form in the valleys, and wind speeds pick up. By mid-morning the turbulence is noticeably worse. By afternoon, cloud cover can completely smother the mountain passes, visibility drops, and flights get canceled outright.
Every Lukla flight is scheduled for early morning for exactly this reason. A 10 AM departure was already pushing it. But between a calmer ride with a company that takes risks and a bumpier ride with the company that doesn’t crash, we went with the bumpier ride.
Pokin agonized over this. Hour-by-hour weather forecasts. Multiple conversations. But the logic held: pick the pilot who doesn’t take unnecessary risks, even if the air is choppier.
Lobby call. Duffels everywhere. Nicholas looking like he’s about to summit a couch.
Morning in the Aloft lobby. Duffel bags piled up, daypacks strapped on, everyone trying to look ready while two of us were running fevers and pretending we weren’t.
The whole crew. Six humans, one bear, three overweight duffels, and two fevers nobody wanted to talk about.
In the van. Masked up. Not talking. Conserving energy for what was about to be a very long morning.
We checked in. We were told our 10 AM flight was Kalish. Great. Except our bags were suspiciously being weighed at the Fishtail Air office. Nicholas noticed this but figured maybe they shared facilities.
Then we got our boarding passes. Fishtail.
Nicholas asked the guy: “Hey, we’re supposed to be flying Kalish.”
The guy, without missing a beat: “Oh, Kalish wasn’t available until later, so I put you on the Fishtail flight.”
No. Absolutely not. We did not spend weeks researching helicopter safety records to get quietly swapped onto a different airline at the counter. Nicholas made a stink about it. The guy seemed surprised that anyone would care which helicopter company they flew with, which is maybe the most alarming part of all of this.
“Oh, okay, hold on.” He disappeared. Came back. Ran us over to the Kalish office. Magically produced Kalish boarding passes for the same terminal, same time.
Nicholas, not remotely convinced: “Is this just Kalish boarding passes, but you’re going to put us on the Fishtail helicopter anyway?”
“No, no. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
The man who had just lied to us said he wouldn’t lie to us. Nicholas raised an eyebrow so high it nearly left his face.
Standing in the Fishtail office. Where we were NOT supposed to be. Note the duffels being weighed behind us.
With Kalish boarding passes in hand and trust levels at an all-time low, we were led outside to a waiting area near the helipad. And then we waited. For over an hour. On the tarmac. In the sun. While sick.
So much for “take it easy today.”
The plan had been: 6 AM flight, gentle start, rest in Lukla. Instead: 6 AM wakeup, fevers, airline drama, an hour baking outside on the tarmac, and it was now past noon. The 10 AM flight was looking more like a 1 PM flight. Which meant afternoon weather. Which meant exactly the conditions we’d been trying to avoid.
Smiling for the camera while internally calculating wind speeds and trust deficits.
But when they finally walked us to the helicopter, it was a Kalish helicopter. The real thing. The guy hadn’t lied the second time.
It wasn’t until about 1 PM that we actually lifted off. Seven hours after we were supposed to. Two sick trekkers, three overweight duffels, one airline bait-and-switch, and an hour on the tarmac.
And we still had to fly through afternoon mountain weather to reach the most dangerous airport in the world.
Two years of planning. Months of stairmaster training. Masks on every flight. Hand sanitizer applied with the frequency and enthusiasm of a nervous surgeon.
We were not going to get sick before this trek.
We arrived in Kathmandu at 9:45 PM the night before. It was exactly as chaotic as expected. Line up for the ATM. Line up for the visa. Line up for customs. Elbow-fight through a crowd of carts to find our bags. Then jostle outside to find D.B. holding a sign, garlands ready, van waiting. That part was covered in the last post. This post is about the next day: gear check, shopping, duffel drama, and the first signs of doom.
Morning started with D.B. going through everyone’s gear. We got assigned our duffel bags, the big waterproof ones with the 3A Adventure logo. The deal is simple: everything the porters carry goes in the duffel. Everything you need during the day goes in your daypack. The duffel limit is 12 kilograms.
This duffel is currently empty. It will not stay that way.
Pokin, Nicholas, and Alice showed up overprepared. Po On knew she needed a few things. Steve needed a bunch more. So the plan for the rest of the day: hit the gear shops in Thamel, and find a SIM card.
D.B. led the group into the maze of Thamel’s streets to find gear.
Following D.B. through the power line spaghetti of Thamel. Steve’s the one without hair. He’s easy to spot.
Kathmandu’s trekking district is wall-to-wall gear shops, and I mean wall-to-wall. Every other storefront is selling down jackets, trekking poles, glacier goggles, and knockoff North Face. The real stuff and the fake stuff sit next to each other and dare you to tell the difference.
Alpine Equipments Hub. Where Steve’s wallet went to die.
Nicholas held me up so I could inspect the merchandise. Sunscreen, water filters, Aquatabs, down jackets in every colour. The shop smelled like nylon and ambition.
Glacier goggles. He looks like a bug. A very prepared bug.
Nicholas already had his own glacier goggles, but that didn’t stop him from trying on every pair in the shop. These ones with the side shields made him look like a mad scientist. He stood there admiring himself for way too long.
Kathmandu has character. This door has seen more history than most countries.
While the others went off to visit a temple, Nicholas and Pokin headed back to the hotel. Their throats were feeling scratchy. Probably just the pollution. Kathmandu air quality is, to put it diplomatically, not great. They’d been wearing masks outside already. No reason to push it.
The view from our hotel room. Hazy. Dense. Loud. Somewhere out there is Everest and we’re supposed to walk to it.
Remember the 12-kilogram duffel limit? Nicholas and Pokin came in at 18 to 20 kilograms. Each.
Oops.
The original plan was two porters for the group. Now we needed a third. D.B. took this news with the calm energy of someone who has watched a thousand tourists overpack. No lecture. No guilt trip. He just nodded, and when we later arrived in Lukla, an extra porter magically appeared. Like he’d been summoned from the mountain itself. I have no idea how D.B. arranged it that fast, but this is apparently just what guides do.
Dal bhat, momos, and juice. Steve’s on the right. This was the last meal before things went sideways.
Dinner was Nepali food. Dal bhat, momos, papadum, the works. Nicholas, Pokin, and Steve sat at an outdoor table and ate like people who knew their next few weeks of meals would be whatever the tea houses had.
Night was spent trying to cram 20 kilograms of gear into a 12-kilogram duffel and pretending that math works differently at altitude. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
So here’s the thing. Nicholas and Pokin did everything right. Masks on every flight. Masks in the airport. Masks outside in Kathmandu. Hand sanitizer. Early nights. They skipped the temple visit specifically to rest and stay healthy.
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know where this is going. Greece 2023: Pokin sick on the flight to Santorini, Nicholas sick in Athens, two doctor visits in one trip. It’s a pattern. These two cannot start a major trip without something going medically sideways.
And right on schedule, as they packed their duffels and got ready for bed, the sore throats were getting worse. Not “maybe it’s the pollution” worse. “This might actually be a problem” worse.
The helicopter to Lukla was at 6 AM. The trek was starting in the morning.
Three flights. Two continents. One very comfortable bear. And a cursed set of airline tickets.
We’re headed to Nepal for the Everest Base Camp trek. Three passes, twenty-something days, altitude that would make most bears pass out. But first: getting there. Which turned out to be an adventure before we even left the ground.
The original plan was Las Vegas to SFO, then through Dubai on Emirates. Clean routing. Easy. Then, three weeks before departure, Emirates canceled our tickets. Something about geopolitical issues. So: last-minute rebooking through Hong Kong instead. More expensive. More stressful. Fine. At least we had flights.
Fast forward to departure day. Nicholas and Pokin show up at Las Vegas airport with all their bags, an hour and a half before the flight to SFO. Walk up to the kiosk. Scan the code. The screen pulls up a very friendly message:
YOUR FLIGHT LEAVES FROM A DIFFERENT AIRPORT.
What.
Turns out Pokin had booked that leg as SFO → LAS. Not LAS → SFO. The flight was going the wrong direction. Normally Nicholas double-checks her bookings, but he’d skipped this one. Shortest leg. Route they’ve done a dozen times. What could go wrong? He also would have caught it checking in online the day before, except Pokin told him not to check in yet because she was busy transferring airline credit between carriers. So every guardrail that would have caught this was disabled at exactly the wrong time.
So there we were, standing at the airport, bags packed, flight leaving in an hour. In the wrong direction.
Luckily, they’d booked the SFO leg a full day early. The whole reason for the extra day was to avoid cutting it tight with connections. A buffer for flight delays, not for booking the flight backwards, but a buffer is a buffer. They logged in, changed to a flight leaving a few hours later, and ate the rebooking fee on top of the already expensive last-minute tickets.
The real reason for the extra day in San Francisco, beyond the safety buffer that just saved us, was Mingalaba. A Burmese restaurant in Burlingame that Pokin loves. Friends were meeting us there. The hotel was only a mile away.
“Let’s walk,” Pokin said. “It looks nice and sunny out. San Francisco is always cold.”
They mapped it. One mile. One hour walk time. Why? Because you have to go around the highway. And they had exactly one hour before they were supposed to be there.
So off they went. Walking fast. In the sun. Which was not cold and pleasant like Pokin promised, but hot. Really hot. They were sweating. In their only set of clean clothes. The clothes that were supposed to last through a fourteen-hour flight, a twelve-hour layover, and another five-hour flight before they’d see their next hotel.
Nicholas was cranky. Pokin was texting friends that they might be a little late. They were power-walking through Burlingame in the California sun, destroying the one outfit they needed to keep fresh for the next thirty hours of travel.
And then they arrived. Twenty minutes early.
Apparently walking fast and cutting through a parking lot or two shaved a full twenty minutes off the estimate, and there had been absolutely no reason to rush or sweat through their clothes.
Nicholas was not pleased. Pokin got her Burmese food. So she didn’t care.
Gate 61. The crew assembled. I got held up front for the photo like a trophy, which is appropriate.
With the ticket drama behind us, SFO was the real launch point. Quick domestic hop from Vegas (in the correct direction this time), then the long haul to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific.
Nicholas parked us in the lounge while we waited. I sat on his lap and supervised. Standard operating procedure.
My seat. My pillow. My armrest. Pokin peeking over to check on me is appreciated but unnecessary.
Business class. Pod seat. Full recline. I settled in immediately and did not move for fourteen hours. This is the kind of travel I was built for.
Landing in Hong Kong meant one thing: food. Well, two things.
This cat is roughly sixty times my size. I am not intimidated.
Hong Kong airport has a ten-foot sleeping cat sculpture now. I have no idea why. Nicholas insisted on a photo. The cat did not move. Not that it would have mattered. I would have handled it.
Wonton noodles, roast pork, steamed buns. The lounge did not disappoint.
The Cathay lounge in Hong Kong is legitimately good. Wonton noodle soup, siu yuk, steamed buns. Two bowls of soup between the two of them. But here’s the real crime: there’s an entire “tea lounge” in there. Walls of fancy tea. Every leaf imaginable. Not a single hot cocoa. In what world is that acceptable? Nicholas tried to make up for it by ordering some tea with “chocolate notes.” It was tea. With notes. I remain unimpressed.
Then the final leg: Hong Kong to Kathmandu. Shorter flight, smooth ride, but we were running on fumes after fourteen hours in the air plus a twelve-hour layover in Hong Kong. Everyone was cooked.
Kathmandu. Masks on. Bears out.
Kathmandu airport at night is chaotic in a way that SFO and Hong Kong are not. The girls put their masks on. I did not, because I’m fearless.
D.B., our guide from 3A Adventure, met us outside. He gets two thumbs up already.
D.B. from 3A Adventure was waiting for us outside with garlands and a sign. Marigold leis for everyone.
MY garland. They clearly just handed it to the wrong person first.
Now, technically, they gave the garland to Nicholas. But obviously that was a mistake. Same thing happened in Hawaii a few months ago. They keep handing my garland to the tall one and I keep having to correct the situation. It weighs more than I do. I have never looked more regal.
Welcome snacks, a handwritten note, and a bear. The Aloft knows what’s up.
The hotel had a welcome note, a little snack shelf, and fruit waiting for us. I inspected everything. The granola passed muster.
Spot claimed. Do not attempt to negotiate.
And then I did what I always do. Found the bed. Picked the center. Settled in.
Three countries in two days. Fourteen hours in a pod seat. One stolen garland. Tomorrow is trek planning day with D.B., but tonight? Tonight I own the center of this bed and I’m not giving it back.
We’re still up at the cabin in Brian Head while Nicholas and Pokin do their Everest Base Camp training thing. Every day it’s the same story. Wake up, put on seventeen layers, strap a bunch of gear to themselves, and go look for a mountain to suffer on.
This time the target was Brian Head Peak.
About seven miles round trip, around 1,200 feet of elevation, plenty of snow still hanging around, and enough altitude to make everyone look like they were preparing for some kind of polar expedition.
I, meanwhile, had my usual excellent system.
Nicholas carried me up the mountain in his backpack.
I was told this was a ‘hero shot.’ Accurate.
There was still snow all over the mountain, but the sun was out and the sky was doing that ridiculously dramatic deep-blue thing it does up high. The place looked good.
They do the hiking. I handle morale.
The trail was actually pretty decent. Snowy in patches, trees everywhere, good open views, and just enough uphill to make this count as training instead of a casual wander. They were carrying extra EBC gear too, because apparently just walking up a mountain isn’t enough any more.
At the top there was the Brian Head Peak sign, which informed us that we were at 11,307 feet. Useful. It also had the far more interesting detail that the stone structure up there was built in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, then renovated in 1995. So this wasn’t just some random pile of rocks Nicholas got excited about. It was an official historical pile of rocks.
Built in 1935. Still more durable than most modern tourist nonsense.
The sign also said that from up there you can see parts of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Not bad for one little summit. Below us were ski runs and tiny people sliding around on them. Beyond that, mountains layered off into the distance doing the usual mountain thing.
Somehow this hike turned into Star Wars.
At one point Eric’s shadow made him look weirdly Darth Vader-ish, and between the trekking poles and the shadows on the floor it looked like somebody was about to have a lightsaber duel in a 1935 CCC shelter. Completely normal mountain behavior.
Summit photo with my porter.
Pokin and I got a proper summit shot together, which was only fair since I made the entire expedition possible by being there.
Then there was a full group summit photo with Nicholas, Pokin, Po On, Eric, and me, all bundled up like a gang of fashionable desert bandits.
High-altitude fashion week.
By the end of it they’d done seven miles, about 1,200 feet of climbing, and a full summit in the sun and snow.
I reached 11,307 feet without taking a single step.
We’re up at a cabin in Brian Head, Utah. Nicholas and Pokin are doing their Everest Base Camp training thing, which apparently means finding any mountain with snow on it and marching up it with heavy bags until their legs stop working.
I had a different plan.
The correct response to a snowstorm.
Chestnut had never seen it snow before. He’s from Hong Kong. The closest he’s gotten to weather is Pokin’s air conditioning. So when the flurries started this morning, he was absolutely losing his mind. “It’s so pretty! It’s like magic! Every single one is different!”
Look, I’m a mountain bear. Snow is kind of my thing. But there’s a difference between appreciating snow and marching through it with a heavy bag for three hours. Chestnut and I had the right idea. Window seat, heater on, front row to the show. He narrated every flake. I supervised.
Meanwhile, those two decided the snowstorm was an invitation.
Five inches of fresh powder. They call this ‘fun.’
Three hours. Five-plus miles. Twenty-pound packs. Through fresh powder, over the top of a ski slope, in conditions that would make a reasonable bear stay indoors.
They came back looking like they’d conquered something. Red-faced, snow-dusted, talking about how the trail just kept going up.
I reminded them that Everest Base Camp doesn’t have a cabin with heating to come back to. They ignored me.
Chestnut said they were brave and inspiring. I said the cocoa was ready.
