Day 44 - Thursday, Nov. 28 - Everest

I’m up before the wake-up call and downstairs early.  The ride to the airport is a short one at 5:30 a.m., before traffic.  The guide explains the procedure and deposits me before the security check.  After a minute or so wondering, I realize he meant I should go through to the second security check right away.  Verification at Buddha Airlines, boarding pass in hand, and I’m off to Gate 1 for flight 100.  When I get to the gate, they’re already boarding (well, on the bus to the plane).  Whew!  Close call!
       There are 18 rows on this two-engine ATR-72 prop plane and I’m in the last row.  Four seats across, with a central aisle, but only the window seats are sold, so there are 36 of us about to see a fantastic sight:  miles of Himalayas.  In spite of some clouds, we take off and climb above the white.  This is my 13th flight, not to Delhi to change for Paris, but an added one to... Mount Everest, the highest peak on the planet.

Sagarmatha aka Mt. Everest

       Once the peaks start coming, we look at the mountain silhouette crib sheet the staff has handed out and try to identify them.  The two stewardesses patrol to help name them; the first they point out is Gaurishankar, Nepal’s holy mountain, a respectable 7,134 m (23,406 ft).  Next to it, the flat-topped Melungtse, a few meters taller.  Then just more and more of them, all snow-capped, with steep green mountainsides tumbling down into cloud-filled valleys.  Another and another and another, until... Sagarmatha - Nepali for the very descriptive “forehead in the sky”.  (Everest was the name of the Welsh surveyor who charted much of the subcontinent.)  The world’s highest mountain at 8,848 m (29,028 ft), and growing five centimeters (2") each year.  Its triangular peak coyly plays hide-and-seek behind a small cloud.  We are either very lucky or truly blessed because the French guests at the hotel did this on Monday and only saw one-third of it.
       Each of us gets a chance to go up to the cockpit for a minute, for a broad-screen view of what we see in bits and pieces from our windows.  (I have two!)  It all reminds me of my dear friend Jean-Jacques Languepin (aka Gigi), child of the French Alps, pilot, cameraman, mountain-climber who was nearby once scaling and filming Nanda Devi (west of here on the India border).  I still miss him, and I admit my eyes tear up.  All of a sudden I can feel him sitting next to me, just smiling, or maybe giving that little chuckle of his.  I didn’t think, until now, that I was doing this for him, but somewhere in the back of my mind, he paved the way.
       We can’t fly around Everest; the other side is in Tibet - now a part of China - and we’d be shot down, so... A sharp bank, and the movie plays in reverse until we land back at tiny Kathmandu’s one runway.

On the way home, lower mountains where roads and towns cling to mountainsides

My last afternoon here I decide to stop being a wimp and foray out on my own.  The palace museum and the Garden of Dreams are not far from the hotel.  Sure, the streets in this neighborhood are small and winding and have no name signs, so I could easily get lost.  Sure, the people, motorists and bikers alike, drive with what I could glibly call abandon, and I might get crushed, especially with bloody few sidewalks to afford refuge.  But let’s try it, map in pocket.  I head out one way and will come back another.

       Narayanhiti Palace was built in 1969, replacing the previous one, destroyed in an earthquake... yet another.  It’s now a museum, so I was expecting artwork.  But no.  The palace - no longer used by the king - has become its own museum, mothballed in time.  Which may explain why I’m the only European here, and also the tallest person around, man or woman.  This is something the Nepalis come to see and visibly they can’t imagine why I’m here.  No cameras or smartphones are allowed; you have to check them at the entrance.  And security does frisk you.  (Always a separate line for ladies, with a female guard.)
       What I’ve seen in front of temples and pagodas I see here on the entrance steps, but a more modern version:  on either side, a fish, then a peacock, then a horse, and an elephant, and finally a lion.
       The building isn’t pretty, the furnishings are nice but not ostentatious by Western standards, except for the scepters and dinnerware.  And for the king’s golden throne, rife with snakes (on the armrests and on the back) and the feet being lions standing on elephants’ backs.  Sadly, there are dead animal heads on the walls and whole stuffed dead animals attacking you from beyond taxidermy:  tigers, bears, deer....  The ground floor was either living quarters for visiting heads of state or reception and banquet rooms; the royal family lived upstairs.  And what a grand horseshoe staircase that is... a wet dream of a banister to slide down, if only there were no guards.  With a huge sitting Buddha at the top, sandwiched between vases of rather tired peacock feathers.  And a stained glass peacock window at the bottom to let in lots of light.
       (A linguistic highlight:  a sign by some folding chairs saying “for elderly and differentlyabled”, the latter in one word.)

The Garden of Dreams

       Then a quick look at where the former king and crown prince were assassinated in 2001, an even newer building behind the palace, which was “dismantled “ (read “emptied out”).  The garden behind that is pretty simple, nothing to write home about, so I decide to go down the street to The Garden of Dreams.

       Again, a different (higher) price for “non-Nepali” visitors, but still reasonable.  Smaller than I’d expected, it’s filled with young chipmunks and people on smartphones.  All the gardeners I see are women working hard to keep things colorful in the now-dry season.  And there’s a huge building of about 20 stories being built just behind the garden; I can’t help but wonder if that’s wise in an earthquake-prone land.  (The waiter at the café tells me it’s a hotel, and shares my concern.)  I sit at a table and have a mocktail, a Tipsy Guava:  guava juice, ginger and lime all frothed up.  Delicious.

       On my way out, an elderly man asks to speak to me.  We’d smiled at each other in passing in the street pre-palace visit, and here he is again.  Turns out he runs a magazine and wants to interview me!

       Then back to the hotel for dinner and some delicious fried cashews to take with me tomorrow on my flight... home to Paris!