Day 5: Panic sets in

Since there was now such a long list of people trying to get on planes to Lukla that had been cancelled we were no longer on an early flight so got to wake up a little later today. We spent a lot of time playing Mafia (a game) in the lobby while waiting to hear news. We were originally told that planes were taking off but fond out later that no planes had taken off at all that day to Lukla. As we only have 1 more contingency day we were told tomorrow would be the last day we try to get to Lukla. So as of now our trip to Everest is off. Everyone is crushed. We know that this oculd have happened but none of us really thought about it. No one handled the news well. The thought of letting down everyone who sponsored us was horrendous and having to tell everyone that we failed because of something that we couldn't control as was to us as trivial as the weather was more upsetting. After we all (fairly) pulled ourselves together the man from ReallyWild told us about the other possible trek to do, the Anapurna trek which is suppose to be the most beautiful trek in the world. But it's not Everest.

We still had our last afternoon to explore Nepal and we got some snacks and got on the bus to Bhaktapur, just outside of Kathmandu, the first time we've all been outside of the city. The air was lovely out there, I'd forgot how nice it is to deeply breathe in the air, something impossible in Kathmandu (many people, ourselves included, wear face masks or tie bandanas around their mouths when in the city). Bhaktapur is actually an entire town composing of 3 squares, ala Durban Sqaure, filled with temples. It was more like we thought Nepal would be and in comparison to Kathmandu, Bhaktapur was crazily clean. We managed to be in the centre of the main sqaure when the procession from the festivities of the women's festival began. There was dancing and singing and all of the women wore red saris, traditional during the festival. We then went to go see the potter section of the town where we realized in all of the confusion of the festival we had lost Naomi and Robbie. Thankfully we did eventually find them.

Bhaktapur was the first time any of the children had been really friendly and we had 3 boys who followed us all day who were quite funny. As is always a problem in Nepal however a lot of kids follow you around and ask for money at the end of the day, something that none of us are used to seeing or know how to deal with. We did see kids in Bhaktapur at school on their lunch break in their uniforms, however there are still a large number of children who seem to not be going to school and either beg or just seem to be around all day. It's not something that you really want to see and all of us are still learning how to deal with it.

Got back to Kathmandu and we all knew that tomorrow was our last day to go to Everest and that if not we would have to decide what to do about our trip. Another thing no one wants to deal with. Fingers crossed.