So, Thursday and Friday have been spent in and around the hotel, last minutes dashes into town for that last piece of kit which you have overheard, which someone else has, which you don't, which is going to make ALL the difference !
Was wondering why with all the poverty why there are all these cows wandering around the town seemingly unowned. Surely with the price of steak aren't they missing a trick to nick the odd one and sell it to a butchers? Then reminded that this is a predominantly Hindu country and the Cow is sacred so one would lose a lot more than one would gain, aparently. Durrr !
Meeting the guides, they all look like Clark Kent but underneath you just know they are wearing their underpants over their trousers and feed off Kryptomite.
Surreal munching Club sandwiches by the pool in the warm sunshine only half contemplating the lack of basic creature comforts which awaits you ....unzipping the rear of your down suit at 7,000m as opposed to a warm kindly lit warmed bathroom, re hydrated rations and no a la carte, ten week old body odours and no Tom Ford !
Meeting the injured guys from Walking With The Wounded, all of whom have sustained injuries on tour of Afghanistan. Asking them questions about how they got shot or blown up, sensitively asking whether they mind me asking these questions. ' Well we aren't going to be of much use as Ambassadors of a Wounded Serviceman's Charity if we just say 'sorry I don't want to talk about it', now are we?' These are awesome guys, they tell it as it is, beers every night, never shirking a conversation or answering a question they must have been asked 100 times, 'How do you tie your shoe laces with only one arm?'
Anyway, kit packed, pathetically low bar bill paid, tomorrow a 5.30 wake up call. Everest base Camp beckons, just 12 days away.
Friday 30 March 2012
Hi Folks,
Welcome to my very first ever Blog ! So its intentional smelling mistakes, rubbish grammar, the odd made up word and general gibberish all the way.
Bloody hell (and some swearing!) it was kind of good to get on the plane and leave the stress of divorce, business, organising the fund raising party behind but very difficult to contemplate 10 weeks away from Annabelle, Alfie and Olivia (daughter, son and girlfriend ... in that order).
Having got a good deal to go club class to Bahrain on Gulf Air, and mindful that since a hip injury during training has meant that my only preparation for the last four weeks seems to have been drinking far too much on the various 'goodbye' dinners, drinks and parties, which friends and family have provided, it was the hardest thing ever not to get sh** faced once again on free champagne and wine .... But I managed it! It was nice to relax for a while, read Reinhold Messner's book (thanks Hugh Colville) on his 1978 first ascent of Everest without oxygen (might give that idea a miss though) and watch the 'Actor', one of the simplest but loveliest films I have ever enjoyed.
A five hour stopover in Bahrain turned into a seven and a half one, but with plenty to do emailing, faxing and posting all sorts of business stuff which the lawyers seemed to have 'overlooked', but hey what’s new? Why do we pay lawyers by the hour, just to make matters even more expensive and stressful for ourselves?
Looking forward to the four and a half hour kip on the flight to Kathmandu when as I get on I find my seat number is changed at the gate. My seat is now row 1 right up by the bulkhead with even less room than if I was flying economy !! Everyone else in Club Class is almost half my size and most of them have never used deodorant, washed more than once a month or ever held a fart in !!! The most uncomfortable flight ever so only got an hour and a half of fitful sleep.
Imagine a farmyard cattle barn, badly in need of refurbishment, with lots of people, some uniformed and luggage scattered in one poorly defined area... Welcome ...you have arrived at Kathmandu International Airport !!
Miraculously my luggage is there. The loos are an experience. The one cubicle is marked ’foreigners’, the other is a French style well clogged hole in the ground. The cubicle is however devoid of paper. I seek out 'someone' who might help and eventually a lady with a dirty apron, a trolley and some empty cleaning bottles is discovered. As verbal language didn’t seem to get me anywhere I have to resort to miming role play, which seemed to do the trick, as she scurried off smiling, only then did I realise the crowd of westerners behind me who had also taken great delight at my mimicry!
My 'gal' soon returning from the ladies with a very small but valuable roll of paper and I marched triumphantly back into the door marked 'foreigners', shut the door and of course the light didn’t work!
Feeling rather better I then have a dilemma. What do I do with this prized but borrowed possession of a tenth of a roll of tissue paper? Do I leave it here in the Gents or return it so the Ladies can have some. I feel it is only right to return it to the lady who gave it to me. I march out seeking to find her, looking around, roll held aloft and once again my crowd of Westerners have spotted me and are in mild hysterics! Beginning to feel like Mr Bean I can’t find her so best I leave it on her trolley and make for the exit.
Outside is a crowd of some 100 taxi drivers and indigenous travel reps being 'controlled' by 8 or 9 uniformed police armed with long black sticks. If any of this group tries to cross the road to the cowshed, sorry terminal building, they are beaten back into line. A sharp 'whack' and back into line. Ok so where can I buy one of these sticks, perfect for getting Annabelle and Alfie to where they should be in good time (anyone else need one? 10% handling fee?).
Ok so this is meant to be an adventure! Well if Everest can match the taxi ride to the hotel I will be surprised. Peril, prospect of frequent sudden death, incredible sights and extreme physical suffering! The minivan is in fact a mini, minivan and I am ushered into the front where my nose nestles against the windscreen. Sensing what is about to happen I reach for the seatbelt...there is nothing on the frayed end. The manic toothless grin of my taxi of my driver is abruptly interrupted as the first gear engages and we lurch forward, my whole face now pressed against the windscreen only for my unsquashed right ear see that another taxi driver is heading straight for us ...
Jeez, what a way to go, in the Kathmandu Airport Car Park!!! Thankfully, with one centimetre to spare them both manage to stop. Please take it easy I say, this seems to be taken as some sort of encouragement to go even faster.
There is no Highway Code in Kathmandu, you just use your horn and bluff it out that any other driver, pedestrian, cyclist or motor cyclist wants to live slightly longer than your taxi driver. Certain death is narrowly avoided at every junction and with every slightly slower vehicle.
His 'short cut' to avoid the ridiculous carnage that is normal traffic is over a hard baked heavily rutted mud road which any self respecting Discovery owner would turn his nose up as too dangerous. Here the road has a new peril, stray, scraggy, moth bitten calves and small cattle that completely ignore traffic as presumably they really don’t care if they live any longer. Gangs of clearly homeless abandoned marauding children swarming around cars or lorries that are travelling too slowly. Dogs which look like they have been starved and used as door mats. Then little groups of monkeys appear on the stone walls above the dried out river where on the muddy banks young naked children play in the water whilst adults wash their clothes in what must be the most unhygienic of conditions. I later hear that this city has the worst incidence of Cholera in the world.
After a seemingly dusty, dangerous eternity, including one bump when the whole mini mini van left the group and skewed around, a blind uphill pullout into four lanes of traffic and a lorry overtake which should have taken out ten pedestrians and three motorbikes we arrived at an oasis of calm, The Hyatt Regency.
....and breathe ......
Welcome to my very first ever Blog ! So its intentional smelling mistakes, rubbish grammar, the odd made up word and general gibberish all the way.
Bloody hell (and some swearing!) it was kind of good to get on the plane and leave the stress of divorce, business, organising the fund raising party behind but very difficult to contemplate 10 weeks away from Annabelle, Alfie and Olivia (daughter, son and girlfriend ... in that order).
Having got a good deal to go club class to Bahrain on Gulf Air, and mindful that since a hip injury during training has meant that my only preparation for the last four weeks seems to have been drinking far too much on the various 'goodbye' dinners, drinks and parties, which friends and family have provided, it was the hardest thing ever not to get sh** faced once again on free champagne and wine .... But I managed it! It was nice to relax for a while, read Reinhold Messner's book (thanks Hugh Colville) on his 1978 first ascent of Everest without oxygen (might give that idea a miss though) and watch the 'Actor', one of the simplest but loveliest films I have ever enjoyed.
A five hour stopover in Bahrain turned into a seven and a half one, but with plenty to do emailing, faxing and posting all sorts of business stuff which the lawyers seemed to have 'overlooked', but hey what’s new? Why do we pay lawyers by the hour, just to make matters even more expensive and stressful for ourselves?
Looking forward to the four and a half hour kip on the flight to Kathmandu when as I get on I find my seat number is changed at the gate. My seat is now row 1 right up by the bulkhead with even less room than if I was flying economy !! Everyone else in Club Class is almost half my size and most of them have never used deodorant, washed more than once a month or ever held a fart in !!! The most uncomfortable flight ever so only got an hour and a half of fitful sleep.
Imagine a farmyard cattle barn, badly in need of refurbishment, with lots of people, some uniformed and luggage scattered in one poorly defined area... Welcome ...you have arrived at Kathmandu International Airport !!
Miraculously my luggage is there. The loos are an experience. The one cubicle is marked ’foreigners’, the other is a French style well clogged hole in the ground. The cubicle is however devoid of paper. I seek out 'someone' who might help and eventually a lady with a dirty apron, a trolley and some empty cleaning bottles is discovered. As verbal language didn’t seem to get me anywhere I have to resort to miming role play, which seemed to do the trick, as she scurried off smiling, only then did I realise the crowd of westerners behind me who had also taken great delight at my mimicry!
My 'gal' soon returning from the ladies with a very small but valuable roll of paper and I marched triumphantly back into the door marked 'foreigners', shut the door and of course the light didn’t work!
Feeling rather better I then have a dilemma. What do I do with this prized but borrowed possession of a tenth of a roll of tissue paper? Do I leave it here in the Gents or return it so the Ladies can have some. I feel it is only right to return it to the lady who gave it to me. I march out seeking to find her, looking around, roll held aloft and once again my crowd of Westerners have spotted me and are in mild hysterics! Beginning to feel like Mr Bean I can’t find her so best I leave it on her trolley and make for the exit.
Outside is a crowd of some 100 taxi drivers and indigenous travel reps being 'controlled' by 8 or 9 uniformed police armed with long black sticks. If any of this group tries to cross the road to the cowshed, sorry terminal building, they are beaten back into line. A sharp 'whack' and back into line. Ok so where can I buy one of these sticks, perfect for getting Annabelle and Alfie to where they should be in good time (anyone else need one? 10% handling fee?).
Ok so this is meant to be an adventure! Well if Everest can match the taxi ride to the hotel I will be surprised. Peril, prospect of frequent sudden death, incredible sights and extreme physical suffering! The minivan is in fact a mini, minivan and I am ushered into the front where my nose nestles against the windscreen. Sensing what is about to happen I reach for the seatbelt...there is nothing on the frayed end. The manic toothless grin of my taxi of my driver is abruptly interrupted as the first gear engages and we lurch forward, my whole face now pressed against the windscreen only for my unsquashed right ear see that another taxi driver is heading straight for us ...
Jeez, what a way to go, in the Kathmandu Airport Car Park!!! Thankfully, with one centimetre to spare them both manage to stop. Please take it easy I say, this seems to be taken as some sort of encouragement to go even faster.
There is no Highway Code in Kathmandu, you just use your horn and bluff it out that any other driver, pedestrian, cyclist or motor cyclist wants to live slightly longer than your taxi driver. Certain death is narrowly avoided at every junction and with every slightly slower vehicle.
His 'short cut' to avoid the ridiculous carnage that is normal traffic is over a hard baked heavily rutted mud road which any self respecting Discovery owner would turn his nose up as too dangerous. Here the road has a new peril, stray, scraggy, moth bitten calves and small cattle that completely ignore traffic as presumably they really don’t care if they live any longer. Gangs of clearly homeless abandoned marauding children swarming around cars or lorries that are travelling too slowly. Dogs which look like they have been starved and used as door mats. Then little groups of monkeys appear on the stone walls above the dried out river where on the muddy banks young naked children play in the water whilst adults wash their clothes in what must be the most unhygienic of conditions. I later hear that this city has the worst incidence of Cholera in the world.
After a seemingly dusty, dangerous eternity, including one bump when the whole mini mini van left the group and skewed around, a blind uphill pullout into four lanes of traffic and a lorry overtake which should have taken out ten pedestrians and three motorbikes we arrived at an oasis of calm, The Hyatt Regency.
....and breathe ......
To be continued !!!
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