On 25th May 2017, while on an official tour I alongwith a mate of mine decided to go to the Everest in a mountain flight. It was supposed to be a one hour flight taking us to Mt. Everest and back. Despite been to Kathmandu several times, I never got a chance to take a mountain flight that takes one all the way upto the highest peak in the world, i.e. Mount Everest. I booked the first flight tickets from Yeti Air, a local carrier of Nepal to visit Mt. Everest. We have been listening a lot about the wonderful mountain flight experience that people had, especially by foreigners who came to Nepal. Most locals had no experience of it as it was their 'local' thing and they did not try.
We boarded a taxi from the hotel at 4:30 am in a hurry to reach the Tribhuvan International Airport to be on time only to find that we were too early when we arrived there. Like us there were many people from various nationalities who came early. At around 5:30 am the gates got opened and boarding passes (manual) were issued to us with a seat number allocated to us. We were promised that everybody will be issued a window seat. Our seat numbers were 7A and 7C and we kept wondering how come A and C be window seats, which became clear when we entered the aircraft and found that there were three seats in a row. Being a photographer I did not like the 7 no. seat that was allotted to me which was just behind the wing. The ideal seat would have been 8 or 9 that had the most clear views. However, during the flight it was not an issue as the fellow travelers were cooperative. This is one heck of a flight where one can find that everybody is so enthusiastic about boarding the flight and was enjoying unlike the others.
As soon as we boarded the aircraft within a few minutes we were on top of himalayas. Yeti Airlines gave us a kind of flight plan showing which all peaks we were going to see. The plan was to reach Everest and then take a U-turn to return to Kathmandu. Soon the Langtang range was visible to us followed by various others then we reach Mt. Gauri Shankar.
Above is the picture of Mt. Gauri-Shankar that is revered by the Nepali people as they worship it. Although we believe that it might be too tough to scale that was why scaling up this mountain was no allowed. Thereafter we reached the ultimate Mount Everest.
Mount Everest is the highest point on Earth at 8850 feet (as per latest estimate). From the South ridge base camp it is a 20 km uphill climb. Mt. Everest was named by the British after Sir George Everest who was the then Surveyor General of India. First they named it and then they tried to find out whether there is any name of the mountain that pre-existed. They found that the locals call it Chomolungma (in Tibet/China). By that time it was too late and the name Mt. Everest had gained currency throughout the world. The name remained as it is since then. Later on the Nepali people named it as Sagarmatha (or the forehead of the Sky).
We were served a glass on champagne aboard the mountain flight and the air hostess assisted us in recognising all the peaks that we were able to see. One interesting thing was they allowed each of us to enter into the cockpit of the aircraft to have more clear views of the mountains. I went inside and saw there were two pilots one male and on female. The female was talking to the passengers visiting the cockpit while the male was busy in flying. She showed me the Kanchenjunga range too.
We came back by 7:35 am to Tribhuvan international airport of Kathmandu. The flight was really mesmerising and I recalled a flight above the Swiss Alps which was a regular one but had wonderful views of the Alps. However, this was a different one as one can see the great Mt. Everest up and close alongwith many other major peaks of the world having an altitude of more than 20,000 ft above sea level.
