I went for a three-day trip to Lukla that began on November 7, 2020. On my first day, I woke up at 6:30 am. But I found out the plane was delayed. So I checked my bag for some missing stuff. Then, I started thinking about the trip. First, I was excited to visit the place as Lukla Airport is one of the most dangerous airports in the world. The second thought that came to my mind was, I would be walking for 4 hours per day as Google suggested, which I thought would be easy.  Then, I had breakfast, sat in the car, being excited, and went to the Tribhuwan Airport.

There I had to wait for my cousin so I sat on the suitcase and was thinking about my trip. "Would we get a helicopter?” I thought. Then my brother came, and we went inside the airport for the security check. Then I went to the sitting area and my father started asking me questions.

“Did you bring the camera?” I said no. Then he asked me, “Did you bring your goggles?” I again had forgotten it. I said no. He was mad at me. Then my father had an idea. He called my uncle who lived close to the airport and asked him to bring a camera. So, he went out of the building to get the camera.

Then I jokingly asked my brother what if the flight member called us for boarding. He said they would wait for us and call us. As he was saying that the flight member called us for boarding. My brother said to wait. So I waited for 2 minutes, then the flight member started searching us. We tried to explain that my father was coming, but ended up with a debate that lasted for 5 minutes.

At that time, my father came in another bus with another member of the flight. Then we got in the plane and waited to reach our destination. The engine started. It was loud. We had a good view of the cities, walkways, villages, mountains and hills in the way.

As we reached near the Lukla airport we saw a giant hill. We flew so close to that hill that many of us thought it was going to crash. But of course it didn’t. Then we landed in the Lukla airport. It was small. I had a feeling that I was in a flight simulator game of some kind. Then we went to the tower (the place where the planes are controlled) and met two people inside the tower.

The first person was the accountant at the airport and the second one was a guy who controlled the airplanes. They were very kind. Then we had our lunch. And went to a hotel room and started packing and dressing, and started to walk. After an hour I realized walking was going to be hard. I walked and rested, walked and rested. I took a look at a place called Chaurikharka. This used to be a grazing land for cattle. This was now a village with stone houses with tin roofs. I reached Phakding which I reached in 6 hours but it felt like ages. Then, I slept there after dinner.

The next day, I woke up at 5 am as I did not have a good sleep, and went for breakfast. There was some Tibetan bread and coffee. It was tasty. Then I started walking. It was hard. But the sound of a white river named Duudh Koshi was calming, so I kept on walking. There were many beautiful landscapes. We clicked many pictures. When we clicked one picture after two minutes of walk, there would be the same landscape but a lot better visually. We stopped in a place named Jorsalle and ate our lunch there. I even had Coke and Fanta. Then we again started walking. Then we reached a place with two intersections— one went up and the other went down. We were confused. So, my brother called a person who knew this place and asked the way. We took the  road going down and kept walking until we saw two suspension bridges. So my brother was told to rest there. Unfortunately, we had to use the top one, which meant we had to walk uphill. Then we rested in the suspension bridge. After that we moved on, and what did we find, more uphill road. Then we rested in a view point. Then there came a straight road. I was happy that the uphill came to an end. However, I realized there were more uphills in the way. We again walked through the uphill road. At last we reached Namche Bazar. It was beautiful. We rested in Namche bazar in Khumbu Lodge. We had dinner and slept. It was cold. Next morning I woke up and started walking from 6 am. We went to the first Everest view point to watch the sunshine. It was beautiful. Mt. Everest’s peak was the only thing visible on the mountain. Other parts were covered with other mountains. There my father booked a helicopter and we went to the lodge and packed our bags and had light breakfast, and started walking to the helipad.

Next we flew to Gokyo Lake. It was beautiful. I carried a giant piece of ice. It was cold. We clicked photos and I brought a bottle of Gokyo water with me. Then we started flying. We flew to Kalapatthar and saw Everest base camp from the helicopter.

After reaching Kala Patthar we clicked some more photographs. The view of Mt. Everest amused me. It was beautiful. I first did not even believe it was Everest that I was looking at. As the helicopter could just wait there for 5 minutes, we went to the helicopter and flew back to Lukla. Then in Lukla, we first had our lunch, and went to the tower. While going to the tower me and my brother went on a walk in the runway as it was closed. We clicked photos. It was scary as the runway went uphill which I did not notice before. Then my father and brother started doing some work and I played video games. At night I ate a special Lukla dish and fried chicken. Then I went to the hotel and slept.

Next morning I came back home. The trip was very fun, tiring and hard. I got to see many landscapes which were beautiful. 

Prakrish Acharya is studying in grade 7 at St Xavier's School.