Fake Starbucks

A few months ago I put up some pictures of a fake Apple store in Kunming but when I came through Lukla the other day I got reminded that they actually have their own claim to fake fame, a fake Starbucks. The signs and logo are there, it has wicker chairs inside and the coffee and cakes are nice.
I reckon they should start a franchise.

Everest Trek - Day 29 Lukla to Kathmandu

The chaos was as per normal with tour guides and aggressive trekkers (me) fighting at the check in counter then having a good laugh about it afterwards. The planes came in on time and after a hectic thirty minutes of planes landing and taking off everybody was on their way to Kathmandu. The flight itself was uneventful with good views over all the hills that I had spend weeks walking over and at nine o'clock I was back in the Kathmandu Garden House.
Good to be back.

Everest Trek - Day 28 Phakding to Lukla

What i thought was going to be an easy couple of hours walk turned into a bit of an adventure. The earthquake a few weeks ago has caused a number landslides on this section of the trail and has taken out someones house as well as badly damaged one of the main suspension bridges. To get across the ravine that the bridge spanned, caused by a previous landslide, you have to climb up steeply on one side then cross at the top of the slide on a path no wider then your boots while holding some tree roots and not trying to think of the two hundred meter drop below you.
All in all rather eventful.

Landslide in Phakding, most of the buildings on the photos are lodges rather then private dwellings.

A plea for help.

The main bridge to Lukla, or what's left of it.

Another flight

Yesterday I flew back from Lukla to Kathmandu and while the flight was delayed by five hours because of low hanging clouds it was a lot smoother then the flight in. In spite of that I was still happy to be back on the ground in noisy polluted Kathmandu.

The flight from hell.

I should have known that the vulture sitting on the airport fence was a bad omen.
The flight from Kathmandu to Lukla departed on schedule at twenty past six in the morning and while the cloud cover worried me a little everything went as planned for the next fifteen minutes. It was then that I noticed that the pilots were peering out of the cockpit window and pointing at the ground the plane suddenly veered left and descended through a hole in the clouds just when we came out from there a rock wall appeared right in front of the aircraft the pilot jerked the plane violently to the right and straight towards another rock face. He then tried going left and up and while this avoided an immediate slamming in the mountain this maneuver caused the plane to run out of airspeed and the stall alarm started going off. We virtually looped back down and managed to get up enough speed to stay airborne and depart this valley for the next one. This was again a dead end requiring the plane to turn so sharply that the G-force pushed on me so hard I couldn't lift my arms to go in a brace position. By this point the locals on the flight were crying or praying as indeed were some of the tourists and the rest of us tried to remember what to do in an air crash. Then as sudden as it had all started it stopped again the clouds parted Lukla airport came into view and plane bounced down.
When we came to a halt and got off the plane the airport staff applauded when I got on my knees and kissed the ground