Last day in KTM: adventures in photocopying, mailing, and repacking

Today is our last day in Kathmandu. The last 12 hours have been a little exhausting with final preparations, but we are finally ready to begin our trek. Among our to do list for yesterday was to make 250 double-sided copies of 4 forms for the research study (after getting final IRB approval), buy additional medications from the pharmacy, and mail about 100 postcards. Unfortunately the labor strike shut down the businesses until 6pm, and on top of that there was a power outage until 8pm. We were still awaiting final word from the IRB but had to go ahead with the copies or they would never have been done in time. Photocopies took over 3 hours on these older machines, but Chris and the store owner stayed until after midnight to finish the copies. While this was ongoing, we also acquired some more medications. The pharmacy was interesting as many medications have different names or formulations here than the US and no prescriptions are needed here. We tried several times to mail some postcards but no post offices were open. Then we had to repack all our things into bags going straight to Pheriche by yak, bags we will trek with, and bags that will stay in Kathmandu.

Finally we went to sleep at 2:30 am only to be awoken at 3am by some very loud tourists in the hallway and then again by jackhammers at 7:00am. We needed at get our bags to the HRA and with the strike, taxis were not common. We finally found one and sent him with all our bags and one person. As you can see, the cab was quite full. Then after more lectures and final housekeeping items, we left the HRA for final preparations. We found a "New Orleans Wine Bar" which had neither creole food or a wine list. We then met the other volunteers for a last supper of beer and pizza and celebrated Bex's birthday.

Tomorrow we fly out to the mountains for the main adventure. A taxi is coming at 4:30am to take us to the airport for the flight to Lukla.

H&C

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On the way to Himalayan Rescue Association office with our gear traveling directly to Pheriche. Cabs are "nano" here.