I know this blog is late, turns out, I dont stick to things very well. Whats new...
Everything went according to plan on my way home from Angola Oct. 20th, I arrived on Sunday afternoon at about 1pm Chelsea picked me up from LAX and we went home to pack. The following day we had lunch with family, dinner with friends, and then drove down to LAX at 8pm for our flight that left at 1am. (checkin closes at midnight) We got to the long term parking lot where we had a small tragedy - we had forgotten to pack Chelsea's passport.
We went into panic mode. I ran inside and told the guy (that I had just checked in and given the keys to) that I needed my keys back because we had a problem. There was no time to go all the way back up to Bakersfield, so we called Chelsea's mom and she graciously offered to bring it for us all the way to the airport! At this point it was 11pm and it takes about 2 hours to get to LAX. We were sure that we would miss our flight. We circled the airport several times and I got out to talk with the ticket agents at Korean Air to explain our situation. They said that at 12:15 it would be the last possible time to check in, the earliest Chelsea’s mom could arrive is 12:45.
In the end, Chelsea's mom pulled up to the terminal, right behind our car, at 12:45am. Jimmy jumped into the driver’s seat and parked our car for us. We ran to the ticket counter, and through the tears and craziness of the situation the ticket agent let us check-in for our flight would leave in 15 minutes! We ran to the gate, which was a solid ½ - ¾ of a mile away. The rest of the trip went very well. The seats on Korean Air seem to be bigger than Delta and Air France, which was nice because it was a 15-hour and 8-hour plane ride from LA to Seoul and Kathmandu!
When we arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal our friend Matt was waiting for us. We all cleared immigration together and were picked up by our tour company, iTrekNepal. The roads to our hotel were crazy, we had a million of those "gasp" moments where you foresee an accident, but cant get any useful words out. But we arrived at our hotel safely and the adventure begins...
When we got there our tour guide was waiting for us, his name was PM - aka Pretty Man. He was a nice guy and has been hiking for ~15 years. We knew we were in good hands. He explained to us what to expect, the route we would take and some advice about the trip. We would all leave in the morning to go to the airport to catch a plane to Lukla - the starting point of the Everest Base Camp (EBC) trek.
Once we finally got out of the hotel, the first thing that we noticed about Kathmandu is how inexpensive everything is, our first meal was three sandwiches and two 1-L bottles of water for $3.50! Thats crazy. The next thing we noticed is that there are knockoff's of everything, everywhere. Northface, Adidas, Nike, take your pick. That night we went back to the room to get ready for our trek the next day. More on this in further blogs.
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