The Everest Diaries: Part 2 (March, 2025)
Reunions
The city was noticeably quieter, as if yesterday’s festivities had drained the streets of their energy. This gave us the chance to wander the streets at a more relaxed pace and aimlessly browse the homogenous shopfronts we encountered along the way. Even the hawkers lacked the willpower to pitch their goods to us. The city was hungover.
However, one particularly excited local approached Ben earlier that morning with great enthusiasm, exclaiming that he recognised him from a newspaper photo. What began as a directionless day transformed almost immediately into an intense hunt for a local newspaper.
We recalled the flashes and snaps of the journalists in Durbar Square and assumed these must have been the photos, which meant that we all had a chance of a feature! The challenge was simple: which publication?
A communication breakdown meant that we didn’t catch the name of the newspaper, so we bounced between stalls, hotels, restaurants, and everything in between, hoping to find a precious copy of ourselves in print. It began with enthusiastic conversations that ended with more uncertainty, eventually evolving into an exhausted, yet concise: “Do you have a newspaper?”
Answers ranged from a blunt “no” – without even checking – to one ambitious hawker who insisted that the only place to buy a copy was from his brother’s souvenir shop. Nice try, mate. I grew exhausted and began to wonder if the initial fanboy had mixed us up with some other paint-stained foreigners.
What if it was all just a wind-up and he was running some kind of practical joke? I started to think newspapers weren’t even sold on Holi – the Nepali equivalent of sending someone to the shops for tartan paint or a long wait. After a rugged and repetitive morning, I eventually gave up on the hunt, disappointed with our lack of Nepali fame.
However, our enthusiasm was shortly reignited after Ben received a message from the police station. They had taken him seriously after all. It turned out that there were several reports of stolen phones during the Holi Festival and one had just pinged a location after it was switched back on. There was a good chance his was among them.
Accompanied by a casually-dressed officer, Ben ventured out to the suburbs and witnessed the most informal arrest he’d ever seen. The police simply approached the house, knocked politely, and entered – discovering more than 10 stolen phones. I was even more bewildered by the fact that Ben was invited along to this bust, as if the police had taken it upon themselves to entertain this foreign victim and compensate him for such inconvenience.
Ben was reunited with his phone and I headed back to the hotel to be reunited with Jez, one of my best friends from university, who had agreed to meet me in Nepal to take on the adventure of a lifetime. I told Jez of this ambition a couple of years earlier when I first relocated to South Asia, and we had always kept a trek at the back of our minds. After visiting Kathmandu a year later, I promised myself I would return to breach the haze and see the Himalayas in all their glory.
The adventurer in Jez needed no persuading and after a few glasses of arrack the previous summer, we began coordinating a 14-day trip that would take us to the base camp of the world’s highest mountain. Jez and I had met about one month before the end of a year studying in the U.S. and got to know each other on a road trip. Alongside two other friends, we spent three weeks touring the western states of the U.S. driving days on end, hiking in national parks, sleeping at the roadside in an RV, eating questionable fast food, and chatting nonsense for every waking hour of the day.
Back at the hotel, I rested on the rooftop and idly scrolled through local online news platforms in the hope of finding those elusive photos. I began to wonder whether I was wasting my time. “I should be out exploring the city” I told myself, but I tried to embrace some much-needed downtime.
Then, just as I almost conceded defeat in finding this mysterious newspaper article, I found exactly what I was looking for. I couldn’t miss it. Front and centre on Asian News International, drowned in paint with the iconic backdrop of the historic Durbar Square, our four cheesy grins accompanied the article:
“Kathmandu turns rainbow-hued as locals and tourists unite for Holi.”
I laughed to myself. Whether or not our local fanboy really recognised us from the newspaper, we had just one-upped him and got ourselves featured on an international news platform. We found our tartan paint, and we definitely got our long wait.
Jez arrived at sunset and we headed straight up to the rooftop of the hotel for some drinks and were joined by the rest of the group I had met during the festival. It was a wonderful moment of new friends and old coming together with the backdrop of a perfectly clear sunset over a Holi-enthused Kathmandu.
The sun broke through the haze and the entire city was painted a golden orange. I looked out in awe. It embodied everything I look for when I’m travelling: a combination of great people, rich culture, and endless surprises.
After a few beers, we stumbled into a local Nepali restaurant and were greeted by a wonderful host whose name I regret never asking. He did everything and more to make us feel at home. He referred to it Nepali hospitality – something we would see so much more of over the coming weeks.
He served us a warm, hearty dinner and slipped us a few extra beers – the fuel we needed for a night on the dance floor at Purple Haze, an old warehouse-style music venue in the heart of Thamel. As the band rocked out under the watchful gaze of a giant mural of Jimi Hendrix, we grooved into the night among locals and tourists alike who came together to celebrate the holiday.
Surrounded by hugging, singing, dancing, laughing, and the clinking of beers, it had become a day of reunions in every sense of the word.
Itinerary? What Itinerary?
The following morning was when everything started to feel real. We were due to fly from Kathmandu to Lukla the next day, yet we still felt largely underprepared. A former colleague of mine had told me not to worry about lugging an extraordinarily large bag around India in the months preceding my trip to Nepal, describing Thamel as the “biggest outdoor market in the world”. Given my experiences of this endless labyrinth so far, he was probably right.
Jez and I travelled light, planning to rent most of our gear from one of the many outdoor stores that lined every alleyway. But first, we had to meet the manager of our tour company and put a face to the man who had coordinated our entire adventure.
A narrow, winding staircase led us to a cramped office overlooking one of Thamel’s many identical lanes. The air was thick, and the blinds fought for their life to keep the blinding sun at bay. I pushed the door open and it swung violently, clashing into an awkwardly positioned water cooler. Despite its rugged appearance, the office had an air of authority: a small, well-dressed team tapped away at their computers without a break in their focus.
A tall, professional-looking man greeted us with an unnatural smile. His name was Arjun, our main point of contact, though the professional and personable nature of his emails was certainly undermined by the severity of his appearance. He sat bolt upright in his chair and spoke almost without moving his lips, occasionally glancing at the enormous monitor perched on the corner of his desk. The pleasantries felt obligatory, and we were ushered on to the most important topic: payment.
[I’ll skip the boring parts, and you can fill in the gaps yourself here, but imagine withdrawing over $2,000 in cash from ATMs that have a transaction limit of $200 and repeatedly run out of cash – twice. Tedious doesn’t even cover it.]
After reviewing the necessary paperwork, documents and confirmations, everything seemed to be in order, minus one particularly important footnote. Our flight from Kathmandu to Lukla was cancelled due to “increased air traffic” – where had I heard that before?
Beyond the flashbacks, I drifted in and out of the conversation, scanning the murky office’s cluttered furniture. The timing was frustrating: we’d just handed over two years’ worth of Nepal’s GDP per capita, and now we were grounded. Still, our adventure was in Arjun’s hands, and we trusted his team to adapt.
And they did, though I can’t pretend it was ideal.
Instead of flying out of Kathmandu the following morning at 08:00, as planned, we were instead booked onto a flight from Ramechhap Airport, a domestic airstrip located about 100 kilometres east of Kathmandu, at 06:00. However, these were what we referred to as “Nepali kilometres” over the course of the day, after learning that the roads between Kathmandu and Ramechhap were notoriously bumpy and vulnerable to landslides and erosion.
To arrive at the airport in time for our flight to Lukla, we had to take an overnight bus scheduled for midnight. While we had plenty of time to make our arrangements, the relaxed pace of the day was disrupted by the pressures of the change in schedule.
We spent the afternoon racing between indistinguishable rental stores, hunting down items from our essential kit list. We eventually lucked out with the most laid-back businessman I’ve ever met. Ram was a small, frail man whose command of English was limited to the brand names stitched on his gear, which he announced like a lion’s roar.
He scurried between the hidden corners of his store, emerging with a disorganised pile of items. He threw each piece of gear at us like a live grenade. Fumbling through it, he asked: “everything?” We cross-checked our list.
Ram had nailed it.
Then, to add to the informality of the affair, he revealed a pocket calculator that wouldn’t look out of place in a primary school classroom. It might as well have been pink and covered with sparkles. Tapping away, he looked up at the ceiling, down at our pile, closed his eyes, and then flipped it around to show us the final price.
The weird part was that even though these numbers could have seemingly been plucked out of thin air, his fragile appearance faded away and he presented his final results with such an aura that I would be willing to die for him in battle. He had suddenly evolved into an experienced mountaineering guru. We paid without hesitation and tried to discuss his return policy, yet the conclusion was simple: “I see you when you are back.”
No names taken, no ID, nothing. Just pure trust. I admired Ram. This exchange embodied every first impression that Nepal had given me so far. Even with communication challenges, we felt cared for and reassured – our state of panic was lifted. He trusted us and we trusted him. What a great business model – we should try it in the West.
And with that, we tingled with excitement. Wading through the congested streets of Thamel, we celebrated what lay ahead: Mount Everest – the Mount Everest. Snowy trails, no mobile networks, basic supplies, cold temperatures, all culminating into the challenge of a lifetime.
We ran through our checklist and packed as lightly as possible. We were prepared for the known unknowns: it was going to be cold, but we didn’t know how cold, so we packed for the worst. Altitude sickness? We had medication. Blisters? Plasters. Sunburn? Hats.
We felt equipped for every possible scenario – or at least every scenario we could imagine.
