Travel Reference
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had volunteered to take the additional responsibility of all the baggage and bribes
and he was out of it. I was the one with the bag of tricks to avoid customs and
bonds. Alex's coolness in the situation was just Alex. What would work, would
work.
Getting through the airport was once again fraught but not a disaster. When offi-
cials pointed to our bags and started to show interest, we responded, 'trekking,
trekking,' and moved to the back of a long queue to give ourselves time. I watched
the customs men checking bags in front, and once I identified what the correct
squiggles were for that day, and what was the right colour chalk, I extracted my
own box of chalk and surreptitiously marked all our bags.
Two hours later, we were out in the bright sunshine with all our kit in a melee of
cab drivers gesturing to us and shouting 'best taxi, best price' from all directions at
once. We managed to get all the bags into two taxis at a fixed price and bumped
along in our small ramshackle convoy to the Lhotse Hotel. Exhaustion hit us as
soon as we walked into the cool marble surroundings of our modest digs. We
checked in alongside commercial travellers from India and the Middle East. The
Lhotse wasn't a tourist hotel but had the advantage of being located halfway
between the airport and Durbar Square and very near the Sherpa Co-operative. We
showered and slept. Strange dreams overtook me, images from the journey, fleet-
ing visions of Annapurna and the quizzical cries of mynah birds just beyond my
consciousness in the garden outside. René woke us some hours later having ar-
rived from Paris with news that all the high-altitude clothing he had brought from
France had not arrived and everything else was in bond at the customs shed. I
should have gone back out to meet his flight with my chalk.
Over the next few days we had three separate tasks. René had to get the bulk of
our climbing equipment out of bond. I had to clear the bureaucracy and make the
arrangements with Mike Cheney at Sherpa Co-operative to hire a sirdar from
Pokhara, a cook and cook boy. Alex had his Shisha Pangma book to finish and his
article to write for Karrimor and many letters of thanks to sponsors.
René spent hours each day at the airport, filling in endless triplicate forms. He
came back depressed after the first two visits. 'It's crazy chaos there. Just a huge
shed filled with boxes, many opened. There are smashed TVs all over the place.'
We needed around $1,700 to get to the mountain and back, and were several
hundred short. I sold everything I could from our supplies brought for this pur-
pose - whisky, coffee, chocolate, meat bars and cereals. The trekker hotels and
bars paid a reasonable price. We pooled all the hard currency we had and gave
