Pheriche to Lukla via helicopter!

I was up early, packed and ready for breakfast by about 6:30 am. I didn't sleep very well as I think I was anxious to to be moving on.

I finished my breakfast then settled my bill and was outside with my bag at 7:30 am. I knew the heli would be there in the morning but I hadn't heard when. The locals were quite interested in this crazy white woman standing around on the main trail as though I was waiting for a bus!

I waited there for an hour but eventually needed to pee. I dragged my bag back to the hotel, did my business, and continued waiting.

As I was standing by the side of the trail and old woman and an old man ambled past prodding a small yak train. I knew instantly that the old man had been a porter. Although he was not carrying anything, he walked stooped over from the waist with a flat back and with his knees bent. Out of respect , I didn't take a picture and I realized that while I had seen quite a few old Sherpa women, the old Sherpa men were not as plentiful. It made me sad to think that the lovely young boys who were our porters might some day end up all crippled up like this old man. It's a very tough place to live.

The owner of the hotel eventually helped me carry my bag down to the heli pad. The heli pad is just large rocks of a similar size piled in a round shape. The spaces between the large rocks were filled in with small rocks. I waited while another team was shuttled from base camp and then finally Elizabeth and Reig showed up.

Neither of them looked particularly well, both were shivering and Elizabeth had developed a fever and a nasty cold. The heli dumped out their bags and took off back to base camp to pick up Jon and Bijay. A few minutes later, the heli was back and we piled the bags back in the heli and all climbed in.

I called shot gun as I felt my consolation prize for not having been to base camp would be to sit up front. No one objected. I think they were all too exhausted to argue. The pilot, Andrew, a New Zealander, gave me a head set and we all buckled up. It was the coolest 15 minutes of the whole trip and such a rush to see the mountains flying by underneath us. I held the Go pro and filmed everything but the actual experience was way cooler than it looked on the video. I've decided that in my next life I'm going to be a heli pilot!!

The flight was over way too quickly. We landed on the Lukla heli pad which is right beside the airport and runway and really close to a building. It's a really dangerous heli pad. Helicopters are being fuelled up while people, and chickens, run around. There are no signs and passengers getting off are kind of shooed to the side to get them out of the way.

We found a porter to help us get our bags to our hotel. We dumped our stuff and met on a roof top patio for lunch. We eventually moved inside when it started to rain. Elizabeth was really not looking well and only had juice to drink.

We spent a few hours resting then had a look around Lukla, ate supper and then had an early night. As the day wore on, Elizabeth got worse and worse and I was quite worried about her. I was hoping that after a good night's sleep she would be feeling better.Read more