Lukla, Nepal • November 2018 • Length of Read: 8 Minutes
Nestled high in the Nepalese Himalayas, a multi-day trek from the nearest freeway, lies the small mountain village of Lukla. The gateway for hiking expeditions up the Khumbu Valley to Mount Everest, its economy pairs the unusual combination of rural agriculture with high-end mountaineering. You can walk from one side of Lukla to the other in a matter of minutes, meandering through the rabble of tea houses which offer up basic lodging, decrepit huts retailing the latest North Face gear, and bars that serve the finest moonshine your rupees can buy.
At the far end of the town is its lifeblood – the Hilary-Tenzing Airport. Nothing more than a small shack surrounded by a chain-link fence, the terminal isn’t exactly a sight to behold… but its scary-as-shit runway sure is. Every bit of the 12 degrees downward gradient is required to get departing prop planes airborne, with the narrow slice of tarmac collapsing off the cliff-edge only a couple of hundred metres away. The same goes for incoming flights, with a tall brick wall the final measure in place to stop those planes screeching in from Kathmandu. Throw in the regular rolling fog, thin atmospheric pressure, and bone-chilling icy winds, and it’s not difficult to understand why Lukla is often referred to as ‘the most dangerous airport in the world’.
This thought was omnipresent in my mind as I slouched over my duffel bag on the floor of the Kathmandu Airport domestic terminal, leafing through a paperback copy of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as the minutes ticked into hours. Perched to my left, my Dad raised his voice above the babble of concerned backpackers as he tried to politely obtain any information he could out of our trekking guide, Kim, as to the delay. We were scheduled to depart on the third flight leaving Kathmandu that morning, but the low-lying fog at our destination had kept everyone grounded. With sunny skies in the Nepalese capital, the first flight had taken off without a hitch, but having travelled the full 45-minutes to Lukla it was forced to circle back after an aborted landing.
“We will be on our way soon,” Kim shouted back, the party line that he’d been treading along all morning. His eyes told a different story, however, and his eagerness not to displease his paying guests was getting on our nerves. Whispers began circling the departures lounge that no fixed-wing flights would be taking off for the remainder of the day, but another hour came and went to the same reply. “The fog will lift soon. The fog will lift soon.”
When it hit mid-afternoon, Dad and I felt that there was no other option but to make a firm decision. If our flight was cancelled then we’d be sent right to the back of the queue and would be lucky to get another ticket for that same week. Getting an overnight bus to another town was also out of the question, so this left one final option: to charter a helicopter. In high demand, this came with an eye-watering price tag attached, but we managed to strike a partnership with a German couple to fill the remaining seats and split the cost 50/50. I was ecstatic, primarily because we were finally on the move but also because I’d inadvertently be ticking off another bucket list item in the process.
Before we could get the show on the road, however, we first had to step on the scales and weigh both ourselves and the kit. For safety purposes, helicopters need to ensure that they are never over-loaded and more so than ever at high altitudes. Therefore, it came as much of a relief to see our guide doing mathematical calculations on the back of a napkin as we took it in-turn to step on a set of scales more designed to weigh the vehicle itself rather than its passengers. Once we’d all taken our turn, I looked towards Kim as concern swept over his face. “I think if I just leave my rucksack behind then we should be all good,” he finally concluded after a long pause, stuffing his essentials into the tiny first-aid kit strapped around his waist. How comforting.
Passports checked, we were squashed into a truck with our belongings and shuttled to the helipads. Anticipation lurched in my stomach and nerves started to take over as we then buckled ourselves into the chopper, the burning afternoon sun reflecting off the glass windshield with greenhouse-like intensity. There we sat stationary for a further 30 minutes as I continued to bake like a slow-roast leg of lamb. No sense of urgency, no instructions and no shared agenda. It reminded me of when I was once waiting at a bus stop in Fiji and asked the lady beside me when it was due to arrive. “The bus will come when it needs to come,” she answered, bemused by my sense of urgency. “Stop worrying. No bus in Fiji has ever been late as a result.”
Eventually, a skinny, ginger-haired guy appeared out of nowhere and hopped into the cockpit with a revived sense of purpose that I was beginning to think had been lost in the world. “We have a small window from air traffic control to take off,” he said in an American twang, professionally flipping switches and making final checks as the rotator blades whirled into motion. “Let’s get this bird airborne.”
Swooping away, the bustling pictures of Kathmandu were soon replaced by a panoramic vista of lush green wilderness across the horizon. Dad has been in enough helicopters over the years that he could have fallen asleep, but despite our pilot’s expert manoeuvering I found the first twenty-minutes of flying to be rather tense until by body calibrated to this new form of transport. When that happened, however, I was able to sit back and enjoy the towering peaks coming into view from the distance, snow-covered knives slicing through the lush canopy. A front-row seat to witness nature in all its colossal glory.
It was as we began our descent that the mist rolled in, swallowing up massive chunks of the landscape as it swept across the sky. We rounded one final gap in the hills and there it was, a sliver of grey amongst the endless vegetation. A speck of dust in a gaping chasm. The runway at Lukla. Blink and you would miss the turnoff. It immediately dawned on me why we had been shacked up in the departures lounge all day. This was some hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raising stuff, and I counted my blessing that we weren’t hurtling towards it in a thirty-seat plane.
As we drew in closer buildings began to appear, then people. Dozens of people camped out on the runway and playing the same waiting game. The yin to our yang. Unlike our fresh-eyed naivety and gusto about the situation, however, the Australian’s I began chatting to upon landing safely showed a more haggard and lackluster appearance. The Base Camp trek had taken its toll on them, physically and mentally, and all they wanted was to return to civilization for a hot shower and proper meal. “We made it to the final camp at Lobuche before I had to turn back due to altitude sickness,” professed a stocky and rugged bloke of similar age to myself, unable to hide the emotion of how gutted he was.
We wished them safe passage home before making our way passed livestock, kids playing volleyball and locals going about their daily chores, before sheltering down in a little guest house called The Nest. What a rollercoaster of a day it had been, and we hadn’t even set foot on the Base Camp trail yet. It suddenly donned on me that this was no joke, and there was a chance that I, myself, may not make it to our end goal at 5,400m.
With that, my stomach wretched and I immediately felt the need to drop a number two. Rushing through the door with the universal toilet sign on it, I took the stairs to the basement three at a time and dived into one of the cubicles to find that it was nothing but a hole in the ground. Having mastered the art of the squat drop in South America, however, I dropped trowel and let it rip, the watery substance free-flowing in this improved angle of release. As comfortable as Western toilets are, they are not conducive to an effective squeeze, the hunched-over posture closing the gut and preventing easy passage.
My insides empty, I reached to my left for the toilet roll, only to find that there was nothing there. Shit. Figuratively and literally. I swept my surroundings looking for something. A flannel? Wet wipes? Nothing. ‘Oh well, here we go again,’ I said to myself as I fashioned my left hand into a pooper scooper. ‘It’s going to be a long two weeks.’