Mt. Everest

India likes its tourists. Especially American ones. One of the few demands the Indian government puts on its guests is that they renew their visas every 180 days. If you have a ten-year tourist visa, you do this simply by leaving the country for a time.

As it turns out, this is a good thing. Left to my own devices, I might venture to a nearby country out of curiosity every couple years but with the visa rule, I am officially invited to add a colorful new passport stamp every six months. 

My first visa run was to Nepal in 2016, and that’ll be our only subject this week so you can just forget about your coronavirus. You won’t see a single solitary mention of it in this entire two-minute read. If that’s too long to wait, I’m sure there are 32 million other blogs that will be happy to accomodate your morbid…(What? I did not mention it. Where? Oh, there. Right. Well, you won’t see it twice.) Okay, where was I? You and your morbid something something…great. Now I forget what I was going to say. Let’s just skip ahead.

Kathmandu is only 200 miles from Siliguri as the crow flies, but unless you can find a really big crow, you have to go 700 miles west to Delhi, then backtrack 500 miles east to Kathmandu. 

Your plane threads the needle between a number of steep, forested hills coming in.

The minute you’re through customs, half a dozen taxi drivers leap to your side shouting out sightseeing tours, shopping tours, Mt. Everest tours,… You politely “no thanks” them all away. “Hwain dhanyavad. Hwain dhanyavad. Hwain…” Wait a minute. Did you say Mt. Everest? THE Mt. Everest?  Okay, you got me! Here I am putting my foot into your tourist trap. Now what?

“Kee?” (“Whut?”)

“I said O…K…” 

“OK?!” He nearly faints. I didn’t even ask the price. (Which is stupid by the way. Don’t do that.) Turns out it was about $150 for a one-hour flight but that included finding me a working ATM for cash, stopping at his office to buy the ticket, taking me to my hotel and providing a crack-o-dawn taxi to and from the airport for the tour.

Here’s the Hotel Bravo.

Stay on the tippity top floor. Nice, clean little bungalows for just $30 a night. (At least they were in 2016. You might try staying there then.)

The flight leaves at 6 am(!) the airport is 45 minutes away and they want you there half an hour early. So you get up at four and you wake up high in the sunny sky in this little turbo prop.

Right away, you notice that the Himalaya mountains are long, knife-sharp peaks instead of the roundy ones you’re used to back in the USA. 

As part of the package, a delightful stewardess sits with you and tells you what you’re looking at. 

Eye-rollingly, you have to fly from Kathmandu practically all the way back to your house in Siliguri to see Mt. Everest.  And although Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet tall, it doesn’t stand out quite as dramatically as little 14,000-foot Mt. Rainer in Washington but hey, it’s MOUNT EVEREST so kwitcherbellyachin’.

(Big plus: the pilots let you come up front and look out the big cockpit window.) 

All in all, it was the most fun for 150 dollars I’ve had on this side of the planet. Oh, whups, I’ve gone over a bit overtime. Next week, we’ll poke around Kathmandu proper.