As we feared, there were no planes today. Apparently there is a small airplane in a town nearby, but it has engine problems and no estimate on when they will be fixed. And alternate planes are hard to come by because this is the busy season and they are all making more money taking tourists to see Everest. Our organizer in Kathmandu is pulling all the strings he can, but until they find or fix a plane, we will be here with nothing better to do than blog posting.At least I seem to have found a better internet cafe. The computers actually work and the keyboard is cheap but not bad. I haven't tried Skype yet, but there's even some chance it might work.
Our hotel is okay, actually quite nice in some ways (see picture). It is in a large garden with a balcony, though we wouldn't want to sit out there in the heat. Our room has air conditioning, which works as long as there is electricity, which usually goes off in the evening when we need it most. Hot water doesn't work in our room, but they happily brought us a couple buckets from another room. Our sherpa guide says it's a four-star hotel, which is probably sherpa humor (deadpan and never quite sure if he's serious).
Nepalgunj itself is just a flat, undistinguished town on the Indian border. The map says it's at 152 meters elevation, though my iPhone's GPS reads a little lower. It's hard to imagine it's in Nepal since we can't even see a hill, though roughly half the country (and all of the usable farmland) is in the plains. Whatever it is, it's hot.
I'll finish this posting here, though maybe later I'll add another to talk about our days in Kathmandu. As long as you keep seeing postings, it means we're stuck. Once they stop abruptly, it means we've found a way out.
