The most dangerous airport in the world, and I'm heading there.
Today in exactly 8 months I will have arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal and about to embark on a flight to Lukla – Tenzing-Hillary Airport, the world’s most dangerous airport. From the day I’ve decided to hike Base Camp I knew this would be the only way to get to my departure point. I am a nervous flyer as it is, so I’ve decided to start preparing myself mentally for this by writing a blog about it. What better way than to put your thoughts on paper – right ;), right??
Taking off from Kathmandu, the flight to Lukla takes about 30 minutes. The fact that they hand out earbuds (cotton wool) on the plane before take-off raised my eyebrows. Listen, if you ask my husband if I enjoy flying, the look on his face will say it all. His response would be “never hold her hand during take-off, while in mid-air or during landing, you will lose a limb”. Lukla’s runway is only 500 meters long compared to Heathrow’s shortest runway of 3658m, with a 12% gradient (equivalent to a 10-story building) to help pilots to stop before they hit the wall (mountain). Pilots are specially trained to fly to and from Lukla. While waiting for your plane to depart, you can enjoy Nepalese milk tea sitting in the sun on the runway tarmac. The runway is used as a shortcut into town, so a siren goes off every time a plane is about to take off or come in for landing. There is no radar or navigation devices; so, the pilots can only depend on what they can see from the cockpit.
Sir Edmond Hillary was instrumental in building Lukla airport. Not only did he see it as the gateway for mountaineers to get to Everest Base Camp more quickly, he also did it to help the locals. He wanted to give back to the society which he loved so much and wanted to build schools. In order to get textbooks etc to the schools, he had to fly them in, so an airport had to be built. The ground consisted of rocks, shrubs and trees. During the day the Sherpas would break the stones, cut the shrubs and trees and during the night, hundreds of Sherpas would walk the airfield up and down to flatten the ground. The ground runway was opened in 1964, and it was only in 2001 that paving was laid. The way I see it – I’m glad to be flying to Lukla and land on a paved runway rather than a ground airstrip.
There are no roads in Lukla so no cars. The only machines you’ll see are the planes. The community of the entire region relies totally on Lukla’s airport; tin roofs, medical supplies, food etc. 70% of the area are still not accessible by land so the only way in or out is by plane or helicopter. Most people here don’t even know what a car looks like.
Ok, so by typing it all up and putting my thoughts on paper – that’s supposed to make one feel better right … ;) All being said, I am looking forward to this adventure. I may have a GoPro on while I’m gripping onto something so that I can experience it later on while looking at the footage lol!
I’ll be posting photos and videos about Lukla to continue this blogs’ topic on my Facebook page, Zebra at Altitude, in a couple of days.
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