45 minutes of fame

I am in Kathmandu, Nepal and realized that both my alarm clock and my watch were both 45 minutes too fast. I thought I was going crazy...that spending 28 hours on airplanes and crossing though 14 time zones had suddenly turned me into Marty McFly. But it turns out that Nepal is actually 11 hours and 45 MINUTES ahead of Washington, DC. Why the hell should a country of 26 million get their own time zone? And what do they really think they achieve (I can assure you it is not efficiency) by being 45 minutes faster (or 15 minutes slower) than the rest of the world?

It turns out that not only is Everest nearly impossible to summit, its also almost impossible to get to. I leave tomorrow for Lukla, a small airstrip high in the Himalayas. The area was described to me as being so inaccessible that the Nepalese had to build the landing strip on a hill; there is not a long enough flat space on which to land a plane. So the planes land going uphill and take off going downhill... From Lukla its an 8-day trek to Everest base camp (17,000 feet). The guide I hired requires proof of insurance should I get AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) and they have to helicopter me out. Oh, and monsoon season starts on June 15. What the @#$!@ did I get myself into?

There is not much to eat in Nepal. In fact, I would give a lot for a cup of Ramen noodles right now.

(I leave for the Everest trek tomorrow morning but will try to post some pictures of Kathmandu before I leave.)