Oct 30 2024 – Lukla to Phakding

Today has been a crazy day, and definitely a day that showed me my limitations. I’m now unsure of how the rest of this trip will go. Certainly isn’t going to go as planned, just not yet sure of how it’s going to change.

Ended up waking up at 3am. Had a message from the company I booked my helicopter ride through that they’d have a guy pick me up from my hotel at 5am.

You have to be pretty tolerant of sketchy situations with no information to be taking a helicopter in Nepal. I was wordlessly thrown into the back of multiple vehicles, left alone in multiple locations without explanation, separated from my belongings, asked for additional money (to be fair, it was like $4.30 us, so in the great scheme of things not much), pulled around airport security (as in, didn’t go through security), had my boarding pass handed to me through a fence, had the actual ticket tear from the boarding pass at some point and had to talk my way through the second layer of security alone having never been through the first layer. Then I was loaded into a van and driven down the runway. Ended up with a group of 3 other equally confused people in a shack between a runway and a military outpost. We waited there for a while, but, eventually someone came in and told us flight order was determined by lottery and flights were spaced 5-10 minutes apart. After more waiting we were marched through what looked like an industrial wasteland until we arrived at a helipad.

We stood around for a while next to the helicopter talking to the pilot. He apparently did his flight training in Chicago, and was amused that both myself and one of the other passengers are from around Chicago.

Once we finally had permission to depart we all piled in. As the fattest person in the group I was crammed in the middle, which limited my opportunities to really take pictures of the countryside we flew over. No complaints as long as we made it where we were going.

After landing I put on my pack and immediately started hiking. In retrospect I probably should’ve stopped in Lukla for breakfast and to fill up my water bottles, and slowed my roll going down the trail.

The trail starts upwards by going downhill. Whoever thought that was a good idea has my disapproval. It goes 1000 feet in elevation before starting to come back up. Also the trail is mostly paved in uneven cobbles, which makes it harder to walk. And stairs. Stairs everywhere. Also makes it harder to walk. The pitch of each step could be 3 inches or 3 feet. Murder on the legs. At my day job I regularly put in around 8 miles of walking per shift, so in the planning stages I figured I wouldn’t have too much trouble with the hike beyond possible altitude issues. I was wrong.

I made it to Phakding, which was halfway to where I was planning to go (the plan was to make it to Monjo on the first day). But my body suffered metabolic collapse on the way up the stairs to the village. I stopped being able to regulate my own temperature and I started showing signs of hypothermia in spite of it being 75 degrees out. Walked into the first teahouse I saw and collapsed. Asked for a room and the owner helped me to it, and I promptly climbed into my warm sleeping bag and crashed. Ended up sleeping for 4 hours, but woke up feeling much better. Proceeded to carb load in the lodge’s restaurant and drink a bunch of water. Hopefully tomorrow I fair better.

It’s not a bad place to be. It’s super beautiful here. Much of the sights on the trek, aside from the splendor of the Himalayas, have been religious in nature. The villages all have Buddhist shrines called stupas, in various sizes. There are also mani stones everywhere along the trail.