Top of the world

With a tantalizing view of the Himalayas visible from the monastery, I decided that having come this far I couldn’t imagine leaving Nepal without seeing Chomolangma (the ‘real’ name of the highest peak in the world, which means “Goddess Mother of the Universe” in Tibetan) so this morning I woke up with the monks at 5:00 a.m. (I confess I usually sleep in until 6 or 6:30) and headed into Thamel to meet my driver. Of all the drivers in Kathmandu, who should show up but the kind man who guessed at my dilemma at the airport when I first arrived and despite my initial protestations connected me with Bhupi, put me in a cab to the correct destination and hunted down my lost phone! I felt like I was meeting an old friend! He dropped me off at the airport and said, “Maybe I’ll see you in one hour...maybe in three or four.” “But my flight is at 7:30 and it lasts 45 minutes so-”, I started. “Remember, Nepali time!”, he laughed. I checked in and continued through ‘security’ to the departure area. (They have separate lines for men and women and I was wearing cargo pants with various pockets full of stuff and my personal inspection consisted of a woman in a blue uniform placing her hands on either side of my waist and then patting once. She was definitely more concerned with verifying that I’d paid the departure tax then with what I might be trying to carry on the plane.) Milling about the gate with a couple dozen other tourists, I met a father and daughter from New Zealand and thoroughly enjoyed talking with them for the hour and half we were there waiting for our flight number to be called. I think they ended up consolidating flights because our number was actually never called and at about 8:45 a.m. a security man took our boarding passes, gave us different passes and off we went to hop in the van to take us to the puddle jumper run by Buddha Air that was going to fly us to Mt. Everest. The plane had room for about 20 passengers with every seat a window seat and although it wasn’t the most modern looking aircraft I figured I’d flown in worse and survived (remember the “Vomit Comet” in Ethiopia, Rienstras?:)). The flight attendant passed out cotton for our ears, little candies, and after 15 minutes or so on the ground we took off. Within 10 minutes we had jaw-dropping views of the Himalayas: an ocean of majestic brown white-capped waves reaching up from the green valley below and stretching farther than your eye could see. Everyone on board was snapping madly with their cameras and taking turns peering out the windows (the best views were on one side of the plane on the outbound and on the other side during the return trip). During the flight each passenger was escorted to the cockpit twice and both times I got to see and photograph Chomolangma (which was especially cool because the the front windshield was about 20 times cleaner and clearer than our passenger portals). Truthfully, the Big C doesn’t look any more impressive than many of the other spectacular peaks (Nepal is home to 10 of the 14 tallest peaks in the world) but just knowing it’s the highest spot on earth lends it some undeniable mystique. I’ve posted a couple of pictures - I have lots more and some video as well (thanks to the iFlip camera from Google that Thomas received as a PFX employee last year). *Special thanks to Thomas for the camera and for insisting that I see Everest while I was here - it was worth the trip!*