We were up early this morning and underway by 5:30am in order to take a scenic flight over (or really beside) the Himalayas. A quick bus ride brought us to a crowded car park and then a walk through an active building site and we arrived at the Katmandu Domestic Airport - really nothing more than a large waiting room that would eventually be packed with people waiting for planes. In the room there were people like us waiting for a scenic flight, trekkers with lots of gear waiting to fly to the starting point for their trek and piles and piles of supplies going to mountain villages.

All flights were delayed a little as there was some fog in the valleys but once in the air we quickly got above the fog and had a spectacular view of the Himalayan Range. Our route traveled east along the southern edge of the range as far east as Mount Everest and then returned along the same line thus giving passengers on each side of the aircraft a view of the mountains. We did not of course fly "over" the mountains as the plane (30 seater turbo-prop) was not able to fly high enough for that. For the record we saw all the big name mountains in the area, Everest, Lhotse, Ama Dablam, and Makalu. Good photos were of course difficult to get through the double pane windows of the plane.

After the scenic flight we had some time back in the hotel before the next leg of our journey began with a commercial flight to Varanasi the oldest city in India (one of the oldest in the world) where we will see some of the "life on the Ganges". This flight was also delayed so by the time we got to Varanasi it was simply a matter of getting to our hotel for the night.