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#
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#
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#
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#
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)#
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#
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.