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Published: November 22nd 2012
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The departure lounge was a little bit more modern than the flight booking lobby – but only just. Checking the flight board for our flight to determine the take off time didn’t improve my worries at all. Whilst I could find several Tara Air flights to Lukla, Flight 113 was shown, and more worrying were the numerous flights who destination was listed as “Mountain”. I hoped our flight was one of those.
After some 50 minutes of waiting our flight was called over the tannoy and we proceeded outside and onto a waiting bus. The feeling in my stomach intensified, in a not dissimilar way when queuing for a rollercoaster at a Theme Park, where each step closer to the front of the queue makes you feel more and more nervous.
The bus we were on started, stopped, moved a little, moved a little more, stopped, then eventually got going and headed off down the tarmac towards a line of waiting planes. Knowing the best seats on the plane were those on the left hand side, I used as much sharp elbows as I could to get to the front of the queue – however
there were others with much sharper elbows that beat me to it. A brisk look around to take in my surroundings before boarding the plane did not show any vultures or other birds, and the skies were cloudless and blue. Maybe I will be OK afterall.
I clambered into the plane – day sack in hand, and deposited my bag on a row of seats with other bags. All the seats with the best views were taken, so my next consideration was which seats were the most likely to be more survivable. Taking one look around the cramped plane interior confirmed to me it didn’t make any difference – so I headed for the front of the plane – which took about 2 steps to get there and plonked myself in the next available window seat. I had a great view of the engine – which I hoped would still be fully functioning in another 50 minutes or so.
When everyone was on the plane, the flight attendant made here way to the front of the plane and began her safely announcement. As the plane was so small she had to stoop to address us. Her safety address consisted of pointing out the escape hatches, which as I reasoned only a child under the age of 10 would be able to fit through given they were so small. Oh well.
As the pilots began making their final checks and clicking buttons, turning knobs and generally looking very busy in the cockpit – to which we all had a great view, the flight attendant handed out cotton wool and a small wrapped object which looked like a mint to me. I declined the cotton wool and took the mint – in the vain hope it might turn out to be an indestructibility tablet. Thankfully I never got to find this out.
The pilot started up the engines, and with a roar we were ready for takeoff. This was the moment I had been dreading for months. It was too late to change my mind now.
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