Everest Flight

January 28, 2010

O, what a flight!

First, I’m sorry that I left you hanging but I haven’t had a chance to write since the flight to Everest. And really, I couldn’t have planned it better. It’s much more dramatic this way as you wondered what happened and assuming that we hadn’t made it or I would have let you know earlier. So please accept my lame apology.
Bay woke up on the day of our departure at 5 AM (30 minutes before our alarm as set) and said to me that it looked clear and she could see stars in the sky and no clouds. Once again we (down to 12 now having lost Frank and Lidia due to Frank’s sickness in the night) boarded the bus and headed to the airport. It was hazy with the smog but I could see that there were no clouds in the sky, no wind, and I thought that for sure we would go today. If I would have flown, then certainly they would. By the time I got through security, I could not see any of the others in our group and thought they all couldn’t be in the bathroom and then worried if I had missed the boarding. Thankfully I had not and they were waiting for me outside the terminal. We walked to the Buddha Airlines Beech 1900 and I walked all the way to the rear to seat 9C, with Pat beside me in 9A. We took off through the haze and broke out of it about 2000 feet above the ground, and oh, what a sight! An entire mountain range, the snowcovered Himalayas, stretched as far as the eye could see from left to right. We compared the differently configured mountain peaks we were passing with those drawn on a handout we were given by the airline, and then the stewardess came and showed us where we were on the route and what mountains were opposite the plane. Everest was to come last as we flew easterly at about 26,000 feet (for those twin engine and jet pilots out there, is that possible that we were that high?). Each passenger was taken up to the cockpit for a view from there and what a view it was, with Everest and Lhotse just ahead on the left, and snow blowing off their peaks in the early morning westerly wind at 29000 feet! Returning to my seat in the rear, Everest soon appeared out my window and I took pictures of it with my two cameras,and even with my iPhone, some with the zoom on and many without, some with the wing in the picture, some without, and so on for about 30 pictures. Everyone was giddy, with those on the right side of the plane chomping on the bit for the plane to turn around so that the view of Everest would be out their window. Poor Pat had the battery die in his camera so he was busy taking pictures with his cell phone, and I told him I would make duplicates of mine and send them to him. We turned to head back to the west, and those on the right side of the plane got their turn. After what seemed a very short time, we were landing back in Kathmandu, the plane filled with giddy passengers. It’s the first time I ever saw Bay (seated two seats in front of me) have a grin from ear to ear while sitting in a plane the duration of en entire flight (or even at any point in a flight - she’s not really a good flier).
Of course, I had to buy the t-shirt and the CD, and an extra CD for Pat. Then we boarded the bus and rode it back in the heavy traffic to the hotel to pack up and leave at 12:30. Actually Bay and I watched the Republic Day Parade (Republic Day is like our 4th of July) in New Delhi - of course, in heavy fog which lifted around noon.


RP.

In very hectic conditions at the airport, we finally boarded an Air India flight back to New Delhi arriving at about 6:00 for our 11 PM departure. We had to go through Immigration, collect our bag and then go to the ticket counter to get our tickets home, through Immigration again, then security to the gate. To make a long story shorter, our flight was delayed 12 hours resulting in us being bussed to a hotel at 3:30 in the morning, our getting 2 hours of sleep, and then getting back on the bus back to the airport arriving at the gate five minutes later than the scheduled departure time. We boarded and the others arrived over the next 45 minutes and we departed at about noon.
My seat mate was “RP”, an Indian patent attorney from New Delhi. We had a far-ranging conversation over the course of the next 15 hours, talking for probably 10 of the 15 hours, and about everything. Among the topics we discussed were: giving money to the handicapped - RP informed me that often a “boss” will pick a handicapped person to sit at a strategic place near a tourist spot, look pitiable, and after his day’s collections, all the money would go to the boss to be distributed by the boss; a tour guide getting a cut of the things sold on the bus from the hawkers and vendors, and the prices seeming reasonable after the high prices quoted previously by the hawkers even though the items were being sold for double what they should have sold for (for example, a set of postcards would be quoted as costing 300 rupees by the hawker, sell for 100 rupees in the bus, when they really should have sold for 50 rupees or $1.10); his understanding that the women want to be under Taliban control because their safety was secured and they were then provided for without prostituting themselves, and wearing the burkhas protected them from rape, etc., and my response that the educated women were certainly not for the security provided by the Taliban that came with the denial of education and the denial of jobs to women, and that this argument, as pointed out by Lincoln, was the argument used by tyrants all over the world for thousands of years, and that if you ate the bread created by the sweat of another man’s brow, you were benefiting from a form of slavery or bondage,and that under our Declaration of Independence, liberty was not a right that could be alienated or waived by anyone, most especially by one enslaved, in exchange for security or anything else; the failure of Indians not being able to work as a group resulting from their lack of education in how to work as a group, whereas Americans are taught to work as a group at a very early age in their sports teams - Indians don’t have sports teams in their schools, their not being able to afford them: the issue over whether corporations are a “person” under the law entitled to the legal protections of the legal system and Constitution, and the situation in India where they need corporations to advance despite the drawbacks of corporations I had outlined (“We would love to have oppressive corporations in India.” I could suggest a few large banks I would gladly give them.); the federal system in India holding up their growth as a nation (having to stop at every state border and paying a tax to enter the state, different licensing requirements and not recognizing the license of another state to permit a bus driver to drive in another state) compared with the US which, in our Constitution, gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce and States can’t make laws creating taxes on interstate commerce; the Hindu religion and the doctrine of ahimsa (“without violence”), living your life in a manner not to harm others, whether vegetarians are destroying living creatures and the work of Dr. Bose; my birography of Buddha; and on and on. What a treat for me.
So what did I learn after speaking with RP? I learned that not all I experienced is really true, that some of what I experienced is an illusion (for example the situation with the begging handicapped person), that India is overwhelming in its complexity and, like warrior poses in Yoga, can only be endured in short doses at the beginning. I’m very glad to be beck home but will always look forward to another new experience.
Thank you, Bay and Sugar, for making this all possible.

Love, Nat, Dad, DB, Matt et al.