The flight out of Kathmandu to Tumlingtar was in Nepali terms on time, in Western terms it was four hours late! But hey we’re in no hurry, time is irrelevant, which in a way is a wonderful feeling. Why were we late leaving? The weather, low cloud and mist at Tumlingtar, a pretty dangerous mixture in a mountainous region when landing becomes essential. What, of course, this means is that we haven’t done any walking today, but at least we’re in the mountains.

Some of you might have noticed that instead writing ‘I’, I’ve been writing ‘we’. Simply put I now have a traveling companion, Chandana. I know very little of her yet but as we are to spend five weeks in each other’s company, I hope we’ll travel well together. She is on this trip to acclimatise for an attempt on Everest later in April.

The title of this blog was Tumlingtar, so maybe I ought to try to describe it. The airport was, last time I came, a grass strip. Now it’s a proper runway. The town is a building site, as is the hotel we’re staying in. There are three finished rooms and Chandana and I take up two of them. The dining is alfresco with a hint of concrete and metal reinforcements. The kitchen, not sure how I can describe the kitchen, but the food that came out of it was very good, anyway. It proclaims to be the best hotel in Tumlingtar with free WiFi, however no one seems to know the password for the WiFi and as for the best hotel? Even in its totally unfinished state, looking at the competition, it could well be. If I ever go to a European hotel that has building work going on, I’ll look back and think, why worry. Please don’t think I’m complaining, far from it. Nepal seems to be a country that’s in a constant state of flux and it’s that side of it and it’s people that I have grown to love.

We had our evening meal on the unfinished top floor, which lent itself to a wonderful roof top terrace with lovely evening view of Tumlingtar.

Tumlingtar is now a few K behind us, as at last we head out up the hot, dust Aaron Valley.