Back in Kathmandu!
What a wonderful way to start 2012 back in the foot hills of the Himalayas on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley!
We finally landed here yesterday after circling above Kathmandu airport for over an hour – the pilot didn’t feel the cloud conditions were safe to land!!
To land you must drop 3,000 feet very quickly to navigate through the hilly peaks around the valley to the relatively short runway and the pilots rely mainly on sight rather than radar. The thick cloud cover today made this very tricky. So we had the opportunity to take in the wonderful scenery of the snow capped Himalayan peaks jutting through the sea of clouds for over an hour!
Finally the pilot decided the time was right – we dropped 3,000 feet very quickly and suddenly the hills surrounding the Kathmandu valley and city itself appeared in all its glory and before we knew it we were finally safely landed… here are the stunning views from the air: