EVEREST FLIGHT

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Thank god we bought our warm clothes as at 5.00 it was freezing. Bring on the thermal underwear!!! Our taxi drove us to the airport where our flight was due to take off at 7am. It had been suggested by our hotel that we should get there early to get the best seats, Tim did not want to be over the wing so he could get the best photos, everyone is guaranteed a window seat though. The airport had not opened so we waited with everyone else for someone to let us in - some poor people were in shorts!!! Eventually they opened the doors and we went to check in. That done we sat in the departure lounge for what seemed like an age. Then flights started to get delayed there was heavy fog outside and it was too dangerous for them to take off and land. Our flight was re-scheduled to 8am, we had been at the airport since 5.45am!!! Then more flights were delayed and finally as we suspected our flight was cancelled. This can be common and we had been warned that this could be the case. The problem we had is that we were leaving the airport straight after the flight to travel to Nargarkot and we couldn't re-schedule. Tim was gutted.

We spoke with Buddah air staff and they told us as we could not re-schedule we would have to go back into Kathmandu to get a refund for the tickets. This was not a good situation as our car was due at 9am and it was already 8.15. kathmandu was at least 30 minutes away and a good 15 minute walk to the agents office. After a very tense few minutes of Tim arguing our case the airline offered to move our seats to the earlier mountain flight which was still scheduled to fly. We couldn't work out why they had not offered to do this before apparently there were two seats available. So we moved the seats - although they were still not sure if the flight would leave and Tim phoned the hotel to tell them we were running late for our pick up.

Finally 20 minutes later our flight was called and we were ushered onto a bus. We got talking to an Aussy girl who told us that her friends had got fed up of waiting and changed therir flight to another day. This must have been why there were two seats available and we were very grateful to two girls we had never met!!!. Another 30 minutes later and we were on little plane and ready for take off.

The himalayas looked fantastic, I did not realise how extensive the mountains are and how utterly beautiful mountains could look. We were given a leaflet that named all of the mountains individually and the flight attendant talked us through where we were all the way through. Then each person was given the opportunity to take photos from the cop pit and we were so lucky as it was our turn right as we reached everest. Tim has been facinated by this mountain for years and I could tell it was a dream come true. The photos we got speak for themselves.

The flight took around an hour and was so good. It was not the cheapest thing we had arranged to do but it was definately money well spent. We landed and set off to find our taxi, the poor guy had been waititng since 9am and it was now 11.30. He was very good about it as we felt terrible for the delay.

Within 10 minutes we were on our way to Nargarkot at the base of the himalayas..............................

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Photos

MOUNT EVEREST
The one with the snow drifting!!