Sent February 16, 2001
Diary of a Trekker
The Helicopter
Somewhere in the Himalayas
Rich and Marci Tuzinsky, a young couple from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I began
our trek to Kalapathar near Mt. Everest a few days ago.
The tiny airport in Lukla at 9,400 feet is closed now until the end of April.
The locals are paving the runway, a much needed alternative to puddles, mud
and loose rocks. Thus, we arrived next to the construction site ducking the
blades of a five passenger helicopter!
It was a thrill I had never before experienced. During takeoff, the propeller
started, first slowly, then the hum was deep inside our bones.
The moment we left earth and started into the air, I had to smile. We were
whisked as if by the wind across sideways. The mountains below fell away. A
wide expanse of endless Himalayan hills, hand sculpted with terraced fields,
covered the landscape.
Unlike an airplane, the view and reality of actual flight was on all sides. I
looked around to see what kept us in the air: no wings like a bird. The huge
propeller churned hard above us, so fast I could not see its parts. That
circular blur somehow held us to the air.
I thought of the buzz of an insect. It must be just as loud to little bug
ears as the helicopter's roar was to mine.
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