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as cheaply as possible. He wouldn't accept the bottle of Scotch I offered him over a
coffee. He had been a friend of Joe's and that was good enough.
'You'll need that where you're going,' he said.
An upgrade to business class was an unexpected bonus. After a fraught departure
thanks to Alex's late arrival, we entertained ourselves with the free drinks, games
of cards and endless examinations of a big photo of the face.
Landing in Delhi at first light intensified the red clay landscape around the air-
port. Customs was as fraught as expected. We had to get our bags from the inter-
national terminal (a very large shed) to the adjoining domestic terminal (a much
smaller shed) and onto our Air India connecting flight without a prohibitive excess
baggage charge. I was aiming for the smallest possible bribe. Security in Delhi was
lax compared to Istanbul and Karachi. To get to the domestic terminal, I simply
walked around international passport control and customs, went outside the
building and entered the adjoining building.
I was relieved to see some baggage handlers with whom we had negotiated the
deal for our Everest bags a year earlier. I walked over to explain that I had 'a little
extra expedition gear'. They immediately went into a frenzy of gestures, telling me
how everything had 'changed now sahib, much harder, must be good deal.' We
threaded our way back around airline counters, customs and passport control with
armed guards giving us no more than a glance to reach the international baggage
area where Alex lay sprawled atop three huge trolleys.
'How much weight?' the head baggage handler asked him.
Alex smiled. 'Maybe 100 kilos.'
'Achha. We see.' His squad immediately started dragging the bags toward a scale
and with every bag weighed our hearts dropped. We gave up mentally weighing up
what the bribe was going to be once the total weight topped 300 kilos.
'Now you pay me $500.' With the start of the haggling, our expedition began in
earnest. Half an hour later, we had managed to get everything onto the Kath-
mandu flight for $150. With a total budget of only $3,500, every penny was critic-
al.
Coming into Tribhuvan airport, I saw a man with a flag standing beside the run-
way on the third fairway of Kathmandu's only golf course. His job was to warn
anyone about to tee off to wait for a moment while a flight landed or took off. My
anxiety returned as we touched down. Our 300 kilos of kit and free sponsor swag
would soon be off-loaded into the arrivals shed. Next problem - could we get it
through without it going into bond? Alex remained relaxed, headphones barely
reaching around his head from ear to ear because of his thick, curly shock of hair.
Anxiety was just part of my nature, as acceptance of the moment was part of his. I
