Second round

Our excitement of flying into the Khumbu region was shredded entirely when after waiting at the airport for over 2 hours the airline decided to cancel all flights. But looking at it from the bright side, it gave us the opportunity to acquire some additional gear in Thamel and the trash bags we had forgotten to buy previously.

Above all, coincidences brought some happy times consequence of the events at the airports. As we were cuing to get in the airport, we met two lovely girls, also Dartmouth graduates, Liz Spence '08 and Mandy Dauten '08. We met later on in the night for some delicious Dhaal Bat and apricot shisha. It was a lovely evening where Liz Embick also got to join us for a while.

Mike and Liz Spence sitting on the cushions at a lovely rooftop cafe.

















Dark, but clockwise from bottom left: Liz Embick, Mike, Liz Spence, Mandy, Mana and Brendan

















We are now heading to the airport for a second attempt in getting to Lukla. If everything goes according to plan you will not be hearing from us in the next couple of weeks, but amazing stories and beautiful photos of Sam I Am will follow.

Rivers or mountains, October is the month

The month when Kathmandu witnesses a disproportionate influx of westerners. The streets of Thamel and even the alleys of Patan seem to be overwhelmed with Americans, Europeans and even South Americans with all sorts of different plans. Some may be here volunteering, working with NGOs and others may even own a business. But the great majority have made their way here with plans to go trekking, mountaineering, kayaking or paragliding.

On that note, I made the point to Mike that we should cancel our plans to climb the big peaks just to stay in the capital, where the party is at now. Silly thinking from my part of course. Excitement has overcome all reasonable thinking in the past couple of hours. We even forgot to buy trash bags because we just wanted to rush home and pack. But our weeks of meticulous planning have insured our safety and there is nothing to worry about, we have taken every precaution to have all the gear we need and information required.

Mike, Brendan and I will be heading into the Khumbu region tomorrow morning on the 7:45am flight to Lukla. If all goes according to plan we'll be on the trail by 9am, enjoying the great views and the painfully heavy packs. All of this was made possible thanks to one wonderful girl who flew in from Valdez, Alaska today.

As we waited for Liz Embick '08 in Thamel today, Mike expressed his hunger and desire to get a snack. On that note I remembered telling Liz that we'd have lunch with her upon her arrival. Hunger was getting stronger, and we fell into the impulse of buying some baked goods. As we are coming out of the bakery we discern an almost empty micro-bus driving directly towards us. This wasn't an ordinary micro-bus; this was a micro-bus driving through Thamel, a micro-bus with a kayak on the roof. At that time both Mike and I thought alike and realized that it had to be Liz. She has brought our brand new mountaineering tent that will keep us warm for the next few weeks and has literally saved our lives. Once again, god bless Alaskans!
















Liz, Mana and John (Liz's friend from Alaska who is also here to paddle) at another rooftop restaurant

Dasain 2065: In the search for the right transistor

This past Tuesday the whole country gathered joyfully with their relatives to celebrate the first day of Dasain, a festival that "celebrates the victory of the goddess Durga over the forces of evil personified in the buffalo demon Mahisasura" as presented in the LP guide. According to the Nepali calendar, this is the year 2065 and with Dasain, that date is cherished. Not much happened in the city apart from most businesses being closed and hardly anybody going to work. We took the opportunity of having peaceful streets with few cars and just as many streetdogs to go for a long evening run.

The rest of the week was most accurately represented by long hours by the desk doing more testing on our prototype mobile phone charger. Again it all seems to be working fine until the voltage coming out of the battery/userbox drops below 5.75V or so, and the goal is to be able to use the charger down to an input of 5.2V. Just by mistake we happened to connect the two positive leads (input-output) thus putting the whole charger in parallel, which resulted in an interesting discovery. The charger will work only under low voltages; approximately below 5.4V it works perfectly. With the realization that just putting the whole circuit in parallel would not be sufficient we started to try out making our own new circuit board. This lead to the most exhaustive search for the right transistor that I have ever led. Lesson: do not expect chinese electronic components to follow universal conventions.


















Our days were also characterized but the never ending fight against load shedding. Well, more than a fight is a sure loss were we try to do something useful when power goes down, which happens everyday for a few hours. If we've already written all our postcard under candle light or empty our stock of gin and tonic, we will choose to go for a run. Mike was feeling creative on Thursday evening and took us on what was supposed to be a chilled 30min jog, and ended up being a 60min sprint through city fog and chaotic traffic. Made it back though, just to find out that the water was also cut off and we were going to spend the night with our pleasant spring-flower aroma.

Saturday, as expected, there was another epic HASH. I had been on the phone to the IRS until 3am the night before, and after watching Die Hard 4.0 i went to bed just to wake up 40min before the HASH. It felt really good though, at least for me it did. Mike on the other side had a very rough and painful time as we tried to climb some 500m of elevation. Dehydrated and with only a Cadbury Dairy Milk in his stomach, he started to feel dizzy, nauseous and sick. I managed to encourage him to keep walking until he expressed that he was freezing and I noticed that he's lips were white. At that time I knew exactly what I had to do. I ran ahead, just to realize that we were not far from the end, an got him a Coke and a beer. From then on, everything got better, especially for Mike, who was baptized as Sparky by the rest of the HASH runners.

The view of the valley of Kathmandu from one of the high reaching HASH mountains

















We have finally finalized our gear shopping today. After a few hours in the pharmacy buying drugs and a couple of minutes in a trekking shop buying a sleeping bag and down jackets we realized that all we had left was a few boxes of Snickers bars to take with us. To be acquired on Tuesday after meeting the fabulous Liz Embick '08 who is bringing our tent all the way from Alaska. God bless Alaskans!

The small pool were we had roxies at night the week before. This time we can actually see how green the water is. Matches the hair and t-shirt.