Day #5 - Scary flight to Lukla Part 1

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With a certain amount of tension and trepidation, my bags are packed for the 0600 departure from my hotel to Lukla airport. My belongings are now packed into 3 bags. The first bag is my 60 litre rucksack and contains those things I don’t need on the trek– like all the clothes for India! The second bag is my daysack and is for trekking with as soon as we land, and the third bag is a large blue hold all with Peregrine adventures plastered all over it. This is the bag the porters will carry all the way up and all the way down. Its weighs about 15kg – 3 times the weight of the pack I will be carrying, and these guys carry 2 or 3 of them!



We arrive at the Domestic Terminal at Kathmandu airport. Already there is a throng of westerners queing to get inside the terminal on the first flight they can catch to, I assume, Lukla like us. If I thought the International Terminal was somewhat basis by western standards, the Domestic Terminal beats it hands down. We pass through baggage screening without issues, probably on account of the fact the person who was supposed to be viewing the X-ray screen output was busy chatting to his colleague.



We sat around the terminal for a short while whilst our guide leader Dirge sorted out the flight tickets. Some baggage handlers arrived to assist with moving items of baggage through the x-ray machine, which mostly involved tossing them off the end of the roller ramp onto the floor somewhere. I hope none of them contained anything fragile.



There was many signs in the terminal which read “Strictly prohibited taking photographs or video”. I duly complied with the instruction until the gaggle of Korean trekkers arrived upon which the terminal was light up with camera flashes as if it was the Premier of a new movie. I whipped out my camera and joined in, clicking photographs at everything of interest.

Whilst I was reassured that access to the departure lounge looked like it was properly managed, with a guard checking tickets on entry, this was short lived when following a visit to the toilet, I noticed an unmanned open gate that lead straight out onto the tarmac!



Finally our guide leader had secured us tickets to fly to Lukla – on Tara Air flight 113! My nervousness didnt improve with this information at all.

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