Day 2 Lukla to Phakding - Yeti Airways, Heavy Packs, and Common Accents

Blinks and I awoke to our 4am wake-up call too tired to appreciate what exactly was about to start happening. We had both woken a little earlier on in the night, Blinky woken from my snoring and me from the pillow that Blinky slammed into me. Dressed in my zip-off shorts, ankle-high hiking boots, grey socks, matched with my obscenely white legs, I trudged to the bus looking quite a bit like a German schoolboy.

The flights were split into Hillary and Tenzing with trektators and medics allocated to each, and it was decided for ease then the first day would be split the same. Amusingly, Yeti Airways was taking us the short 25-minute hop from Kathmandu to Lukla, form where our trek would begin. Through the primitive security checks, which involved not much more than adorning each bag with a sticker that said 'security checked', we headed out to our plane. Nervous jokes were exchanged before they made way for proper nerves as the air stewardess handed out cotton wool and a boiled sweet. I'm not generally a nervous flier, but I was absolutely sh1tting myself as we sat on the tarmac. So much so that I readied the airsickness bag as I started shaking pretty noticeably.

Putting away down the runway like some students Volkswagen, we finally got airborne and my nerves subsided enough to take in the view. I'd received a tip to sit on the left-hand side of the plane which was a masterstroke, as for 25 minutes I was treated to some amazing scenery, with various snow-capped Himalayan peaks jutting into the sky, most of them resembling sharp pieces of dripping ice in a deep-freeze turned upside-down. The pilots pointed out Everest to us just before we descended into Lukla. When I say 'descended', I mean the mountain rose to meet the plane at the worlds hairiest airport. 18 people died on a similar flight last October trying to land on the sloped runway pincered in by mountains and valleys, but thankfully we had every passenger down safely.

Lukla itself was where it started to hit home what was about to happen. We were carrying our packs through the small village, with huge peaks basically on 4 sides of us. The air was noticeably thinner than what I'd ever been used too, and I really started to worry that I'd overpacked. I didn't know it at the time, but these were 3 pretty common themes throughout the entire trip for everybody involved.

Once we setout, I found the going fairly easy, which was pretty fortunate considering the first couple of hours was a 300 metre descent. Throughout the afternoon, I had to keep reminding myself to look up at the mountains instead of down at the ground as I walked. When I looked up I noticed a massively imposing summit. One that I couldn't imagine anything ever being any bigger than. Nir told me the mountain I was looking at peaked at around 5700 metres. This worried me. I tried to imagine where 5100metres would be on that mountain and thought to myself that was how high we were going. And then we were going to play up there. The few small inclines we'd faced had me puffing already.

Nick, one of our medics, reckoned that we'd be burning 4500 calories a day minimum, which is about double the normal daily intake. With this in mind, I set about lightening my chocolate load and trekked the last 90 minutes with Wes' documentary camera in my hand. Wes showed me how to take a few shots, which I duly did. At first I was pretty nervous with the expensive equipment in my hands, but after an hour I fancied myself as a budding Steven Spielberg. What i didn't realise was this was about the last time I'd see any camera on the trek. The 2 camera's we had were uninterested in me and Mark Jordan from ITN was a virtual stranger to me the entire trek. He did take a great liking to Butler due to his Essex accent (he was worried the ITV viewers wouldn't take to the large portion of privately educated accents on the trip), and also to Breck for his Aussie twang, Amusingly, far from being 'common', Breck went to King's College (possibly the most exclusive school in Australia) and has a degree from Cambridge.

We hit the first teahouse that we were to stay in and I was pleasantly surprised with how modern it was. I was told to expect accommodation to be similar to the village hall we all slept in at Kinsey's weekend. Far from this, we had separate twin rooms with ensuites that flushed, a communal shower-type-device, and a pleasant enough dining hall for everybody to sit and eat/play cards/do their journals etc. I have stayed in worse hostels in major European cities.

Petrified of being late in the mornings, I tried getting myself into a routine of packing and getting my clothes ready for the next day before joining everybody for dinner. I managed to avoid joining a fair smattering of us who enjoyed a pint and then an evening in the Public Bar's of Phakding and took myself off for the first full-nights sleep I'd had since the Wednesday night in London.

Food Count - Omelette sandwich for breakfast. Fried Bread, Vege's, Spuds, and a slice of unidentified processed meat for Lunch. Swimming Pool of Garlic Soup and Chicken Neck and Vege’s for Dinner. After advice from Kirt, I braved the chicken.