One member of our trekking team is John Christiansen, the namesake of his grandfather, the esteemed county attourney emeritus for Beaver County. John is a freshman at Spanish Fork High and has been given generous leave of his teachers to join us for this month-long venture across the globe, provided that he lugs a ton of homework with him. Each teacher stipulated some schoolwork project to leverage the potential of this real-world learning excursion, and John is taking advantage of the full spirit of the intent. For his science class he carrying out a month-long study of cognitive capacity versus elevation and yak dung fumes. He has generated a series of challenging arithmetic and reasoning exercises that he will be administering at different stages along our hiking path. He measures the number of correct answers and the amount of time we take, and checks our O2 saturation and pulse rate. We have already taken the quiz a couple of times to establish a baseline for our optimal algebraic skill, and for some of us we’ve already got kind of a dull edge. Fractions, compass directions, “what does the slash mean?” We took our first quiz at the Bangkok airport at sea level after our first good night of sleep, and we took one this morning here in the lobby of the Yak and Yeti at about 4,300 feet. John hypothesizes that by the time we’re at the Island Peak high camp, 18,000 feet, our readings of dullness will shoot off the charts.

After the 13-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean I can now scoff at anything under, oh, 8 hours. But I still can’t stand the center seat. So our flight from Bangkok to Kathmandu was a leisurely 3 hours, and in total it was 62 hours of travel, 21 hours in flight for us to arrive at our destination. This landing was much different from anything we had seen in the other cities. The lush green valley, the rolling hills mantled with pine trees, the monolithic mountains to the north, and the heaps of rubble dashed in all directions, making up the city of Kathmandu. I squoze out of my seat in the plane and rushed down the steps to the runway and into the terminal. I knew the hundreds of passengers on the plane were stampeding to the same visa station I needed to pass, so I made sure I got a head start. I made it through quickly and moved on to the baggage claim. All 14 of our bags arrived in tact, and Pema came to meet us. Just seeing him gave us great relief, because we knew we had someone we could trust and he would lead us past any obstacles. With him leading us through, the customs agent waved us on and Pema thwarted the somewhat pushy baggage boys outside who wanted to help us load the van. Of course they wanted to talk about “tips” first before doing the work. It may be callous to think of it this way, but the standard day’s wage for a laborer like that is maybe US $2, and they were asking for dollar tips. In relative terms that is a scam, so we kind of brushed them off. I did give one of them a quarter, and he snorted in disgust. It was a shiny, new quarter though.

We’re just getting on the plane for Kathmandu (another 1,350 miles to go), and I just had the most amazing sense of comfort as I passed a gentleman wearing the traditional Nepalese “topes” hat. After rooming with Pema over the summer I must have subconsciously assimilated pretty well and it feels like I’m returning to familiar territory. Last night we got our first full night of sleep, and we needed it badly. We went to a very nice Thai restaurant, and most of us were so lethargic from jet lag that we kind of slumped over our green curry and dozed off. When I say “we” I’m just being polite. Actually, I was nibbling at all the food to try all the fantastic food. And when I say “nibble” I’m just being polite. It was more like I was “ravaging” or “savagely gnashing”. It was so good! So, now that our baggage has caught up with us and we’re properly checked into the airport we’ll continue to log or last hours in flight. So far we have recorded 25 hours of travel time from departure from Salt Lake City to our arrival in Bangkok. It looks like we have only another 3 or 4 hours to Kathmandu. Checking out of the airport we did get snagged with a “Passenger Service Charge” of 500 Bhat. We couldn’t figure out what it was for, other than “just because they can.” But it was a great way to unload our wads of extra Bhat. I bought a bunch of candy and juice to clear out the last of my coins and small bills. Good thing it was at the airport too since it was so much more expensive.