Take off take two

More than a week ago, on Sunday 17 October 2010 (or Ashwin 31, 2067 by the Nepali calendar), I had the priviledge of facing the crush at Kathmandu domestic terminal, getting on a plane, getting to the Himalayas, before being told that the flight would be turning back to Kathmandu.

The alternative would have been this. The landing at Lukla - my destination - is not the safest in the world. It's basically a runway facing a cliff. The weather had been bad all week and it was a small miracle that the weather cleared just enough for the two flights before mine to land.

I was quite glad that we turned back, though I can't speak for the French trio I met who'd also been on a flight that had been turned back the day before. I was also glad that the pilots / airline didn't feel the pressure to land the plane, given that out of the previous 7 days, 5 days' worth of flights to Lukla had been cancelled. An aviation catastrophe of another kind.

So I made my way back to the Kathmandu domestic terminal the next day. The ladies at the counter remembered me and since there was a free seat on the first flight of the day, that was the flight I got. I suppose it helps when you're 'that foreigner who speaks a little Nepali'. It also helps when you don't throw a tantrum at the check-in staff for not seeing your name on the list of 'confirmed seats', causing you to wait around for 1.5 hours until you get them to check the list again only to discover that hey, your name was on the list all along...

And yes, the plane landed in Lukla that day.