I slept all night, until after 7 AM, when Lal brought me tea and told me to pack, since we had to be ready to leave when the planes started coming, in case any seats were available. Lal had been up for a while, and already had breakfast. He had spent all of our money, and had to borrow 1000 Rs ($20), which he said the agency would pay back in Kathmandu. We went to the Himalayan Lodge just above the airport to have my breakfast, and to wait. I had a pancake with jam, an onion omelet, a Mars bar, and hot chocolate. I had been hungry for a candy bar for some time. Lal played with a white kitten while I ate.
When the first planes arrived from Kathmandu, around 8:30, we went down to the airport to try to catch a flight. I could have had one if I had been alone, but Lal needed a seat too, so we waited. We weighed our bags while waiting, and found that we had been carrying the same weight, 15 kg each. I had suspected they were close. Lal's pack was much smaller than mine, but he was carrying my compression stuff-sack, which he called my `heavy bag' since is weighed a lot for its size. (I have heard of one case where a porter refused to carry a compression sack because it felt so heavy, until the straps were undone, making it somehow seem lighter.)
Three planes left together, and then we waited for them to return. We waited all morning. The airport is a small concrete building with some baggage scales and two booths, labeled `ladies' and `gents' for the security check. The two airlines serving Lukla, Royal Nepal Airline and Nepal Airways, have desks inside, and the Asian Airlines helicopter service has a room outside. You can easily get to the departure area without going through security, just by going out the back door, and I had been in and out all morning. There was a snack shop in the departure area between the airport building and the airstrip down the hill. Two guards, both unarmed, wondered around the airport.
While waiting, I stepped on the baggage scale and found that I weighed 73 kg, or about 160 pounds, so that I had lost about ten pounds while trekking. I had lost another ten pounds since the beginning of July while preparing for this trek. Lal weighed only 60 kg. Up the hill, I saw two men carrying a body wrapped in white cloths on a stick. A larger group followed them. Around 1 PM, an announcement came by radio saying that there would be no more flights from Kathmandu today.
By now, it was very cloudy. We gathered our bags and went back to the Himalayan Lodge to get a room. We got a large double room upstairs, overlooking the airport. This was one of the largest and best lodges in Lukla, and was the fanciest one we stayed in on the entire trek. The rooms and even the outhouse had electric light. The outhouse had running water and a flush squat toilet as well. There was also a hot shower in front of the lodge, but it was still too cold for me to want to use it. The dining room was very warm. A dog and kitten lived at the lodge. The dog stayed outside, but the kitten liked to curl up by the stove.
A Japanese group finishing a trek was having a huge feast, including a meat dish, for lunch. I ordered fried noodles with vegetables and egg, which was very good. At 2 PM, Lal asked for the radio to be turned on for the news, which was read first in Nepali, then in English. The election results for most of the precincts were in, and the Communists had taken control of parliament by a small margin. Lal showed me a picture of the prime minister visiting this lodge, and told me this meant he was on his way out. Kathmandu voted largely Communist, which was surprising, since Kathmandu is relatively wealthy. It is the rural hills, outside of tourist areas, where people are truly poor, and often do not see 100 Rs ($2) in an entire year. Lal seemed pleased with the election results, and said that Nepal probably needed a change. He thought the Communists won because people were unhappy with the former government, and they were the most organized opposition party. No one seemed quite sure what the change would be.
I thought about going out for a walk, but it was starting to rain, so I sat in the lodge and looked through the magazines lying around: mostly old Newsweeks and Asian hotel trade publications. Two meteorologists returning from collecting data at a weather station in Dingboche came into the lodge. One was a student who said he was interested in studying physics. I told him I was a physicist, and worked for the University of Tennessee. He told me he thought he found something I lost in Dingboche, and showed me a Nikon lens cover. He had seen my Nikon camera, which I carried constantly, and assumed the lens cap was mine, although it wasn't.
A French Canadian named Gerard, who works for a software company (Neural Data) in Palo Alto, California, arrived in the dining room and sat near me. He guessed correctly that I was a physicist, without being told. He said I looked like a physicist, and that he had originally majored in physics before finding a job in computer science. We talked for a long time, mostly about physics, computers, and cameras. He had a Nikon camera with an enormous lens, and was very interested in photographic equipment, especially high-quality lenses. He was probably slightly younger than me.
For dinner, I had a plate of yak meat fried with tomato and onion, which I had seen the Japanese group eating for lunch. I also had French fries, called potato chips here, with a San Miguel beer. This made a tasty dinner, although I had to wait a while for my fries because they had been mistakenly delivered to a German at another table. I asked for two glasses and shared the beer with Lal. A 20 ounce bottle is quite large, and I didn't want to drink that much myself. However, when we finished the bottle, Lal ordered another, and I ended up drinking a lot of beer anyway. The beers were 120 Rs each, but this was supposed to be our last night, and we could celebrate a little. Lal was out of money, but I still had plenty, since I had spent very little on the trek. The manager was supposed to have put our names on a list for a flight tomorrow.
Lal told me he would be very happy if I could bring back a camping group of about seven or eight people. He said that for $25 a person, he could organize a fully catered tour, with cooks and porters. My trek would be free. Outside, the full moon reflected brightly off the snowy mountains surrounding the valley. The clouds had lifted after sunset, as usual. After Lal went to bed, I went outside and attempted to take a few pictures, with exposures between one and three minutes. Then I went to bed as well. This was a comfortable room, and I slept all night.
Scott A. Yost, 1994. All rights reserved.