Hi, I'm Sumi

The plan was to hike from Namche to Deboche today. That didn’t happen. But what did happen was arguably better, at least for a bear who appreciates heated rooms at 3,875 meters (12,713 feet).

Nicholas was feeling noticeably better. The antibiotics from the hospital were kicking in, and for the first time in a couple days he wasn’t hacking up a lung every ten minutes. Pokin, on the other hand, was not improving. But the trail doesn’t wait, so off we went.

The hike from Namche to Tengboche is about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles). Not the longest day, but it’s mostly uphill and the altitude is starting to make itself known. Every incline feels a little heavier. Every rest stop feels a little more earned.

You round a corner, more mountains. You go up a hill, more mountains. You stop to catch your breath, mountains. It’s relentless.

The trail between Namche and Tengboche follows the Dudh Kosi valley and then climbs steeply through rhododendron forest. By now we’d gotten used to sharing the path with yak caravans and porters, but the traffic felt heavier on this stretch. More lodges ahead means more supplies going up.

And there she is. Ama Dablam. The mountain that looks like someone designed it specifically to be on postcards. At 6,812 meters (22,349 feet), it’s not the tallest peak around, but it might be the most dramatic. That sharp, angular summit with the hanging glacier on its face. It kept popping up at every turn for the rest of the trek, like a mountain that knows it’s photogenic.

We stopped at a teahouse along the way for a break. High Mountain Bakery, apparently. They had a big prayer wheel out front, and obviously I had to give it a spin.

More suspension bridges. This one framed Ama Dablam perfectly between the valley walls, which feels intentional but probably isn’t.

We made it to Tengboche by the afternoon. The monastery is the main attraction here, the largest in the Khumbu region. The entrance has the classic dharma wheel flanked by two golden deer, prayer wheels lining the walls, and stupas scattered around the grounds. The whole crew went inside to walk around. It had a prayer room and various halls with murals and statues. Pretty cool, even for a bear who typically prefers gaming rooms to prayer rooms.

Now, the original plan was to continue another 20 minutes downhill to Deboche, where the rest of the group would be staying. But Nicholas had two things on his mind.

First: the new moon was approaching. He’d been planning astrophotography shots for this stretch of the trek, and Tengboche sits on an open plateau with minimal light pollution. Perfect for shooting. Deboche, on the other hand, sits lower in a forested valley. Not ideal for sky views.

Second, and more importantly: Pokin wasn’t doing well. She’d been pushing through, but she looked rough. Nicholas noticed a brand new lodge right next to the monastery, The Himalayan, which had literally opened its new wing two days prior. He and DB walked over to check it out.

The room was heated.

At 3,875 meters (12,713 feet) in the Himalayas, heated rooms are about as common as bears with blogs. Power up here is scarce and expensive. Most teahouses are stone cold, sometimes literally. You sleep in your sleeping bag inside a sleeping bag liner inside all your clothes. So a heated room? That’s not just luxury. That’s Nicholas knowing his wife needed to rest properly.

He booked it. Everyone else hiked down to Deboche. Nicholas and Pokin stayed in Tengboche.

The room was genuinely nice. By any standard, not just by Himalayan teahouse standards. Loft bed, sitting area, wood paneling, actual curtains. For Nepal at nearly 4,000 meters (13,000 feet), this was absurd. Nicholas was paying American hotel prices for it, but one look at Pokin curling up in a warm room instead of shivering in a sleeping bag, and it was obviously the right call.

That night, Nicholas had his first shot at astrophotography. New moon. Dark skies. Ama Dablam as a backdrop.

The entire valley filled with fog.

Not a single star. He couldn’t even see the monastery from the room. Four thousand meters (13,000 feet) up, perfect astronomical conditions on paper, and the mountain had other plans. A preview of what was to come for the next several nights.

But the morning made up for it.

The fog was gone. The sky was impossibly blue. Ama Dablam, Thamserku, all of them just sitting there in the early morning light like they’d been waiting all night to show off.

Worth the detour. Worth the heated room. Worth every rupee.

Onwards and upwards. Literally.

This was acclimatization day. Two nights in Namche, one day to let your body catch up with the altitude. The plan was to use it for a day trip to the Everest View Hotel: terrace at 3,880 meters (12,730 ft), expensive tea, views of Everest. Pokin had been excited about it since Kathmandu.

The problem was that Nicholas sounded worse, and now Pokin had developed a cough too.

Nicholas said the Everest View Hotel wasn’t a good idea. Nicholas is usually right about these things, even when you don’t want him to be. Missing a day trip is annoying. Missing the Three Passes trek because you pushed too hard on a rest day is a different kind of regret. Pokin knew this. She didn’t like it, but she knew it.

So instead we hiked to the Sagarmatha National Park Museum, a shorter climb to about 3,550 meters (11,650 ft). There’s a statue of Tenzing Norgay up there, and supposedly a view of the big peaks.

Pokin hiked so slowly up the hill that she lost sight of the group entirely. This is a recurring theme. She leaves early to compensate, everyone passes her anyway, and then she yells at Nicholas for walking too fast. The circle of trekking life.

The Museum

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We walked to the viewpoint, and for the first time on this trek, the clouds cooperated.

The Giants

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Every day since Kathmandu, the big peaks had been hiding. Overcast, fog, clouds thick enough to walk on. We’d been told the mountains were there. We believed them in theory. But until this moment, the highest thing we’d actually seen was the ceiling of a teahouse.

There it was. Everest, dead center, with Lhotse beside it and clouds rolling around their bases like they were being dramatic on purpose.

We’d been to the Alps. We’d been to Patagonia. Those are big mountains. This was different. The Khumbu Himalaya has the greatest vertical relief of any continental interior on Earth: roughly 7,000 meters (23,000 ft) of elevation change over just 20 to 30 kilometers. You’re standing at 3,500 meters (11,500 ft) looking up at 8,849 (29,032 ft). Your brain doesn’t have a reference frame for it. You look up and something feels wrong, like the scale has been edited.

Tenzing

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Tenzing Norgay was born probably in 1914, possibly right here in the Khumbu. He worked his way up from porter across six Everest expeditions before the one that mattered. On May 29, 1953, he and Edmund Hillary became the first confirmed people to stand on top of the world. Neither one ever said who stepped up first. They agreed it didn’t matter.

Time named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. His statue stands here, above the town where he may have been born, looking toward the mountain he climbed when everyone said it couldn’t be done. Not a bad spot for a statue.

The Hospital

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After the museum, Pokin still wanted to push on to the Everest View Hotel. Nicholas said no. Rather than argue about it on a mountainside, we decided to do something useful instead: go to the hospital.

All three porters were dispatched to escort us there, which felt excessive until we realized they weren’t really asking.

The Um Hong Gil Namche Community Hospital sits above the main town, funded by the foundation of Um Hong Gil, a Korean mountaineer and first Korean to summit all fourteen eight-thousanders. He built this hospital in 2017 to serve both the local Sherpa community and the trekkers who show up at altitude and discover their lungs have opinions.

Dr. Binod Kr Sah confirmed what we suspected: early-stage respiratory infections, both of them. The prescription was rest and a frankly impressive quantity of drugs.

The porters sat outside the entire time. We tried to tell them to go. They wouldn’t budge. We asked the hospital assistant to tell them it was OK to leave. She said they’d get in trouble if they did.

Total bill: $103. Exam, diagnosis, every medication, credit card fee. For two people. At a hospital built by a Korean mountaineer in the Himalayas.

We walked back down with bags full of pills and instructions to rest. Take it easy day it is.

Pokin never got to the Everest View Hotel. But she got her first look at Everest from the museum viewpoint, and she got antibiotics that would keep her on the trail for the Three Passes. Sometimes the boring decision is the right one.

Not that she’ll admit that.

We arrived in Namche in fog so thick we could barely see the building across the street. The town could have been three houses or three hundred. We had no idea.

Then morning happened.

The clouds from yesterday were gone. Just gone. And behind them was this absurd amphitheater of a town carved into a mountainside, with the Kongde Ri range towering behind it like a backdrop someone forgot to make realistic.

Nicholas was supposed to be resting. He was up before the sun with his video camera instead, working on some film project. Which woke up Pokin. Who then grabbed the camera and went out to take photos.

I stayed in bed. Like a responsible bear.

That’s the thing about Namche. It’s simultaneously an ancient Sherpa trading post and a town where you can get espresso and a haircut. Prayer wheels next to Columbia Sportswear ads. Mani stones next to signs for helicopter evacuations.

Namche sits at 3,440 meters (11,290 ft) where the Dudh Koshi and Bhote Koshi rivers meet. Centuries before trekking poles existed, this was a stop on the salt trade route between Nepal and Tibet. Traders crossed the Nangpa La hauling salt and wool one way, rice and tea the other. Namche was the marketplace in the middle. These days the trade is mostly North Face jackets and overpriced dal bhat, but the bones of the place are the same.

From up high you can see why the traders picked this spot. Natural shelter from three sides, a view of anyone coming from any valley, and a flat area in the middle for a market. The Saturday market still runs here, same spot, same idea. Less yak butter, more chocolate bars and SIM cards.

By the time we got back, the sun had crept down to the rooftops and the town was waking up. Other trekkers emerging, blinking, doing the same thing we’d done an hour earlier: looking up and realizing they were surrounded by mountains they couldn’t see yesterday.

Not a bad morning. Not bad at all.

The advice at lunch was simple: fill your water bottles. At least two liters. Because from here on, there wouldn’t be many places to stop.

We loaded up and left Jorsalle behind.

Into the Gorge

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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.

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.

The Hillary Suspension Bridge

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Then we reached the bridge.

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.

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.

The Climb

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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.

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.

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.

Namche

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And then, through the fog, a gate appeared.

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 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.

The Stairs Continue

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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.

Sagarmatha National Park

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Then we hit the gate.

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.

Into the Park

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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.

Lunch at Jorsalle

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Breakfast

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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.

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.

The Split

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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.

Hitting the Trail

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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 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.

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 Valley

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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.

Traffic

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The EBC trail has a traffic problem, and it’s not other trekkers.

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.

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.

The Porters

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I need to talk about the porters for a second.

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

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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.

Cultural Pit Stops

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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.

The Guides

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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.

Rustic Views

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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.

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.

I use the term “landing spot” generously.

The Landing

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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.

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.

Finding the Hotel

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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.

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.

Sherpa Shangri-La

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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.

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.

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.

After Dark

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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.

The Problem

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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.

We loaded up fast. Headsets on. Doors closed.

The Flight

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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.

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.

Lukla.

The Most Dangerous Airport in the World

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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.

Landing

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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.

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.

The Split

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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.

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.

Small problem.

The WD-40 Incident

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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.

The Helicopter Research

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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.

Right?

The Night Before

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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.

Loading Up

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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 Airport

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Kathmandu domestic airport is not like other airports. It is loud, crowded, and operates on a system of logic that I have not yet decoded.

The Fishtail Incident

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This is where it gets fun.

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.

The Wait

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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.

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.

Onwards, I guess.

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.

Gear Check

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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.

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.

Thamel

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D.B. led the group into the maze of Thamel’s streets to find gear.

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.

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.

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 Vibes

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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.

Duffel Drama

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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.

Last Supper (Before the Coughing Started)

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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.

The Part Where It Gets Suspicious

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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.

Hope for the best, I guess.