The Traveling Islander

Day 8 and unfortunately it was a bit of a bust. Today was the day we were supposed to fly up to Lukla airport on the mountain. It is considered one of the most dangerous airports in the world due to extremely short 527-meter runway,12% steep gradient, and high altitude (9,334 ft). Unfortunately all this makes it very sensitive to weather and it requires visual landings. We got up at 4:30 to store our non hiking gear, have a box breakfast and head to the airport. The domestic terminal was a little chaotic. We were put in the hands of a new guide who didn’t say much but appeared to be well known at the airport. He constantly was running behind the check in desk to talk to the airline staff. He was quite funny and seemed to own the place. We hadn’t realized many flights hadn’t went yesterday either so there were many people camped out on the floor waiting. Unfortunately when we arrived at about 6 all flights were on standby for weather due to cloud cover. We decided to wait it out for a bit. There were hardly any seats so it was the floor or nothing. There was a second option which was to pay $150-$400 per person to take a helicopter up. We had received a good price at 9 am but just as we were about to take it the checkin desk opened. Mum is not super keen on helicopters so we checked in. Our guide got all our bags weighed and checked in, then dropped us off at security. Security wasn’t too bad and we went through to the gate. Here we had another long wait. Some flights left but none from our airline. As we were waiting other passengers were becoming more desperate starting paying for helicopters. By the time the flight was finally cancelled about 13:00 there were only about six of us left at the gate. Anyway the flight was cancelled so at least we got a refund on the flight which our agent could then put towards finding us a helicopter. We headed back out of departures and grabbed our luggage then we waited to see what the agent could do. Unfortunately the pilots were out of hours so our agent quickly arranged for us to go back to our hotel. He got us a flight for 5:45 tomorrow. So back to the hotel we went, arriving about 16:00. Try again tomorrow! #lukla #nepal