They found it!

BA just rang and they’ve found the bag! It should be in València airport tomorrow 

Bag update: none

My bag is still unmoving, and BA is still unwavering in saying it’s lost.

Circled in red is precisely where my bag is, according to my AirTag.  

Well that was a short trip (not really!)

British Airways have lost my bag. I can see it quite clearly using my Apple AirTag at Heathrow at baggage enquires, but talking to a human who could actually help is way more difficult than you could possibly imagine.

The lost bag report has been filed, I am most amused at what BA feel I could pack in my bag — they asked for a list of things it contains, and one of the items, well, see the last item in this picture 

Please BA, explain to me how passengers can pack weather, and yet nobody thinks to bring sunshine back to England from their holidays?!? 

So aside from questioning the nature of the environment and the ability to transport rain, wind, and sun, I am now faced with an uncertain future for my bag. The only hope is the AirTag.

(To clarify, I’m still in Spain, the trip continues, I’ll just hope that my bag eventually turns up)

Packing, moving, planning

Today thanks to some friends I’ve made huge progress on the remaining packing, and I’m actually feeling confident I’ll make the timeline — I’ve also sworn, for the umpteenth time in my life, that I will never ever move again. 

As for plans for the trip. Aside from the obvious seeing new things and meeting new people, and learning Spanish, I have another plan for the trip.

The world of infotech is moving faster than ever, particularly in the realm of AI. I’m taking my laptop with me to spend downtime learning, researching, and playing with some aspects of this field. This means that sometimes I will be staying in places and doing “nothing”, because I’m using the time to work on my laptop. Unlike previous trips it won’t be new stories every second day.

A new journey begins...

I am dusting off this blog to document yet another journey, this time I'll be visiting places such as Spain, Iceland, Switzerland, and some places in South America.

Belated finished!

Well, things got tiring and fast as the trip concluded, so here's a summary of how things went:

• Total steps: Approx 370,000 steps for the trek.
• Equivalent building flights climbed: 2700 (every time we ascended it approximately 1 floor it counts, descents don't count).
• Total days hiking: 17
• Total km hiked: Unknown
• Total mars and Snickers bars consumed: too many to ever have any ever again, ever. Half way through got sick of them.
• Total weight lost: approx 5kg
• Belt notches down: 2

Lukla flight was good, not nearly as exciting leaving as landing, but still better than any other airport!

Arrived in Kathmandu and had to wait for driver for van, as an earlier Intrepid group had stolen ours!

Once I got to the hotel, I had a long hot shower sitting on the floor scrubbing my boots and trekking poles for dirt (NZ BioSecurity would have a word otherwise).

We went out that night for dinner and did the big farewells for some of our band of 12 who were flying out really early the next morning, as well has had the formal thanks to our lead guide Prem.

He's a great guy, and I think we all loved him lots.

Oh, that one member I spoke about earlier, who had some trouble fitting in - she turned out all good, after some love and care, helping her understand we needed her, she is part of the team. So that turned out well. She enjoyed her last few days lots.

The next day after getting back to Kathmandu (my final day in th city), we had a group breakfast and began our fond farewells.

I was surprised how closely we had bonded, way more than any other group trip i had done. We were very close, and saying goodbye was very very hard! Since we all lived in different places, it couldn't be "see you later", or "see you next time", but we came up with "see you on the trail sometime!"

Of course Kancha (Andrew) lives in Oakland, so I shall pop up from Sunnyvale and see how he's doing before too long. He's probably heartbroken from having to separate from Dawa! (Assistant guide with whom they both bonded extremely well)

Packing in Kathmandu consisted of taking the contents of my duffle and daypack, selecting the cleanest smelling clothes out, then dumping the rest into a giant plastic bag and shoving in my backpack for travel home... the giant plastic bag was a necessity, once I had a shower and my nose returned to "normal", I discovered the contents of that bag could also double as a chemical warfare weapon.

The flight home wasn't too bad, and involved an overnight (in hotel!) in Singapore. 

I'm currently back in Auckland, preparing for my next big adventure that starts tomorrow - moving to San Francisco!

I don't think I'll journal that trip :)

See you on the trail,

Nick

Lukla airport

Big few days. Had party last night with our porters and assistant guides who would be leaving us today... maybe...

Waiting at Lukla airport for the fog to clear. For some context here, 2 days ago we ran into a group that had been waiting for 3 days for a flight, but finally gave up and hired a helicopter.... so fog clearing isn't necessarily a given.