A Flight to Mount Everest

It has become something of a tradition for me to spend Christmas in a different country. In the past, I’ve had the opportunity to spend Christmas in Croatia, Morocco, Singapore, and Mauritius.

Christmas 2019 continued the tradition since I got to spend Christmas in Nepal. However, this Christmas was a bit more special since I got to take a Christmas Day flight to see Mount Everest and the Himalayas.

No visit to Nepal is complete without a visit to Mount Everest. Of course, one cannot just simply go to the top of Mount Everest. That takes a huge amount of planning, preparation, and training since it can be treacherous to reach the summit, and there are many stories of people who have died while trying to climb it, and whose bodies still remain there.

For those who are not mountaineers or prepared to scale the famed mountain, it is also possible to do a helicopter trip to the base camp, but in my opinion, that is prohibitively expensive.

Since I do not have the mountaineering experience to traverse up to the summit, nor do I have the money to afford a helicopter trip to the base camp, a very reasonable and popular option is to do a 45 minute to a 1 hour long flight from Kathmandu that goes along the Himalayas.

On Christmas morning, I woke up super early (3:00am) in order to get ready for an early morning pickup from my hotel to the airport. I was scheduled to get picked up at 5:30am. When I came down to the lobby, everything was very dark, the door was locked, and the only employee was huddled under a bunch of blankets behind the front desk and sleeping soundly. Since I came down a little bit early, I made sure everything was charged up and patiently waited for the pickup while listening to the worker snoring behind the front desk.

The pickup arrived right on time as scheduled, and we headed to Tribhuvan Airport. Kathmandu has heavy traffic problems, but at this time, the roads were nearly empty, so the car arrived fairly quickly at the domestic terminal.

Once we arrived at the airport, the tour representative gave me my ticket confirmation and told me to go to the Yeti Airlines check-in desk.

If I have to be honest, the domestic terminal is certainly simple and very old and outdated. In addition, there was no heat inside, so the entire building was freezing. However, the check-in process went smoothly with no problems. Once I had my ticket, I went to the waiting area and waited for my 6:45am flight on Yeti Airlines.

Unfortunately, the flight ended up being delayed for 3 hours because of bad weather in different areas. When the weather was fine in Kathmandu, the mountains were covered in haze, and when the haze moved from the mountains, it was not safe to take off from the airport due to fog. However, the flight finally departed at 10am with clear skies.

There were about 25 people on the flight. Even though we were assigned seats, everyone was given their own row so that everyone had a window seat.

Once the plane took off, the flight attendants make some brief announcements about what mountain peaks would be seen. They then gave a handout that listed off the names of the different mountains. In all, it took about 10-15 minutes for the Himalayas to come into view.

It is important to note that the plane does not fly into the Himalayas. As far as I know, none of the airlines that do the Everest flights do this. Instead, the plane flies parallel to the mountain range, so the plane does not get particularly close. This is when it is helpful to have a camera with good zoom capabilities.

Once we were flying along the mountain range, the flight attendants let each person go into the cockpit to get a pilot’s view of the mountain. When my turn came, Mount Everest was coming into view, so I was the first passenger to get to see Mount Everest from the cockpit.

Admittedly, Mount Everest is very far from the plane, so it does not look particularly impressive or tall when looking out the window. However, looking at Mount Everest in real life and knowing it is the tallest point on Earth is a marvelous experience.

In order to give people an equal chance to see the mountains from each side of the plane, the plane went along the mountain range twice. During that time, people were free to move from one side of the plane to the other. I was also even afforded the opportunity to go into the cockpit once more to see Mount Everest from the other side of the cockpit.

After the flight finished flying past the Himalayas, the flight attendants gave out a glass of champagne to each passenger along with a certificate of achievement for doing the Everest flight.

After about an hour and fifteen minutes, the plane returned to the airport, and all of the passengers were picked up by different drivers and returned back to their hotels.

All in all, this was a wonderful way to spend Christmas, and I certainly thankful that I had the opportunity to see Mount Everest with my own eyes.

Have you done an Everest flight? What did you think of it?

Please enjoy the photo gallery! All photos were taken by me using a DSLR and iPhone.