Big Brothers Big Sisters Everest Base Camp Trek Dispatch

May 5, 2010 – Safe and Sound in Lukla and Phakding

This is Leila Silveira reporting from Phakding. Today we had an early start in order to catch our flight to Lukla. We were at the airport at 5:30am. Unfortunately, at 7am when we were all seated inside the plane, we learned that our destination, the Lukla airport, was closed.

Our pilot, who was an extremely friendly Nepalese man raised in the state of Minnesota, USA, explained to us that the closure was due to fog, therefore we would wait a little bit more to see if the weather would clear up. Well, I have to say that the plane was not the most comfortable place to be stuck, but we were all happy to wait since the option of returning to Kathmandu was not very appealing.

Luck was on our side, and after an hour the airport did open and we were off to Lukla to begin our expedition. When the team saw the Lukla airstrip they understood why the pilot was very hesitant about flying in to Lukla. The airstrip is 1800ft/550m long and you really need to be sure that the conditions are perfect before leaving Kathmandu.

We made it to Lukla, safe and sound. As we left the small terminal, we stopped in at a German bakery and had some treats which tasted even more delicious due to the fact that we had been up since 4am. We had all sorts of fresh baked goods.

We then left to got to our lodge where we organized our gear and got ready to go to Phakding, our first stop on the trek. Everyone was really excited to be in the mountains, and to finally be on the trail to our destination.

Well, it's been quite an exciting start to the trip already! But as they say, it is all about the journey, not the destination!