We got up at 4:30 this morning to go to Nepalgunj airport, since our chartered aircraft was supposedly there and ready to fly at the crack of dawn. We knew it looked unlikely as it was still raining, but once we got to the airport, the rain actually stopped for a bit and showed us a patch of blue sky. We started to have some hopes of flying until we learned that the airstrip at the destination Juphal was too muddy to be used today. And then the blue sky “sucker hole” closed up and it began pouring harder than ever.

There are now at least five groups in town trying to get to the same mountain airport. One French climbing team wanted to know if we’d share a helicopter, but that would have been ridiculously expensive and probably impossible anyway, since Nepali helicopters are devoted to rescues and food deliveries. And with deadly landslides happening elsewhere in the country, they are sure to be occupied. So we went back into town, driving through several inches of water in some places. Because of crowding, we’ve moved to a yet another hotel called Dreamland. It is somewhat better than the one last night.

Some of the groups are giving up, including the Belgians who we’d hoped to share a plane with. That’s bad news because without a charter we are back depending on a scheduled flight, which may or may not exist. Our organizer wondered if we also wanted to fly back to Kathmandu and do something else, but it would be a terrible waste after all this effort and our expensive restricted area trekking permits are non-refundable.

So we continue to wait. The weather forecast predicts good weather in Kathmandu from Friday on, and the satellite photos suggest it may arrive here even earlier. If so, the airstrip should dry out and we might be able to fly as early as tomorrow morning. There is still some concern that the high passes might have been closed by snow, but we think it will not be a big problem since it will be at least a week before we get to them and snow melts and packs quickly in this season.

I suspect we will have at least one more day to wait in the internet cafe, but if we succeed in flying, our blog entries will stop for almost a month with little or no warning. Don’t worry if that happens. Rest assured that we will not do anything stupid or put ourselves in harm’s way. We have a very good guide and we will keep ourselves safe above all.