April 18
We arrived in Kathmandu Airport after our flight from Seoul. I was nervous for the last two hours because I was told I needed passport photos to get in and mine were in my checked bag. Luckily, I just got two right at the airport for a couple of bucks. We waited for an hour and a half for the most unorganized and hectic visa on arrival ever. It was so stressful and a terrible experience of constant pushing and shoving. We had airport pickup for our hostel for $5. We are staying at a place called Alobar1000, which is the most famous hostel in Nepal. It actually kind of sucked but everyone stays there so the people are great. In Nepal in General though, many of the hotels have the same problems, like power about 25% of the time, hot showers sometimes, fairly cold at night because no heat, etc. I’ve been in worse. We got to the hostel and immediately walked around the area to get warm stuff for our trek. We are extremely unprepared. We are hiking to Everest Base Camp for two weeks and we are flying out first thing tomorrow morning. We know next to nothing and have no warm clothing, coming from the beach. We each spent about $30 between two of us and each got knock off North Face fleece pants and pullover, winter gloves, another warmer shirt, warm socks, hats, and Matt got a backpack. We also each rented a really warm sleeping bag for $.90 a day. That was the most inconvenient thing we had to carry but honestly was our most valuable asset throughout the trek. It got f***ing cold as balls at high altitudes of almost 20,000 feet. We bought our things and went back to hostel to get ready for the trek tomorrow. We were not prepared but we had a flight booked for the morning and we are going, so such is life, let’s do this.