Namaste!
Hello from a cloudy Kathmandu. After Romke dropped me off (again!) I caught my flight to London in time, and even charmed my way out of the excess luggage penalty.
Noel & Hanna beat me to it though as they got upgraded to business class from Belfast to London! And they scammed even more free luggage
We hooked up at Heathrow, got along right away and together flew to Kathmandu via Abu Dhabi.
Alex (Abramov) picked us up and we raced through the always busy streets of Kathmandu. We also met Nate Schneider who will be climbing with us and has been travelling with his father Andy. As Noel and Lynne are from Northern Ireland they had to test out the Irish pub of course, but he as he would not go for canned Guiness, it was Everest lager instead..
There are fewer tourists than normally, but still the atmosphere is great as ever. We are now in the Vaishali hotel in Thamel and getting the last things organied.
Meanwile most other climbers have arrived, our other guide Nickolai is here as well as our team doctor Andrej. Our entire neighbourhod seems to be overtaken with teammembers wearing our specially made red team jackets and shirt
Tommorow we wil do the touristy thing and take a nice tour of teh different Hindu and Buddhist temples.
The Maoist problem is getting stronger though and we might have to find a new solution for getting our gear to the border which was planned in the next few days. But the Maoists have called a strike and are getting more aggressively lately, so we must take care.
Meanwhile we ae enjoying the friendliness of the Nepali people, more post later this week!
All the best,
Harry
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World Wide Baggage Services has sponsored us by sending our cargo off!
Thanks Ybo! If anybody from the Netherlands wants a good, fast and cheap but especially easy way to send of excess luggage, go to
www.baggage.nl and have it picked up at your doorstep!
As always our clothing is sponsored by The North Face!
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