My 60th birthday adventure via one of the most dangerous airports in the world!

What was it that saw me flying up to the highest airport in the world with scheduled flights? Well… I’d made the dubious decision to trek to Everest Base Camp to celebrate my sixtieth birthday and this flight to Lukla is how you get up there to get started on the trek.

Incidentally it’s one of the most dangerous airports in the world too. Let’s not think about it.

We were at Kathmandu airport by 6am on this, officially day one of the trek. Actually we were there even before they opened the doors, waiting in a queue that you could just tell was going to be rushing those doors as soon as they opened. We’d successfully negotiated the stampede, the rigmarole that was weigh in and the farcical security measures that saw men and women segregated, patted down and then allowed through into the departure lounge still with an assortment of paraphernalia in their pockets and we’d claimed a group of seats in which to wait it out.

But waiting it out at Kathmandu airport was tedious, we were supposed to be out of there by 7am but by half past nine, with no further advance in our travels upward, we were definitely a restless mob. There was a problem, cloud surrounding the airport at Lukla. Weather reports indicated that our chances of flying today were slim and even the most patient of us were beginning to fret that we wouldn’t be going anywhere today.

But there was a Plan B, we could take helicopters up into the mountains, it would cost extra but it was a unanimous decision. It took another hour or so before the first lot of us was ready to leave the departure lounge and head for helicopter take off but eventually we were loaded into a small truck that would drive us all around the perimeter of the airport to reach the helicopter landing pad.

The truck pulled up on the edge of the tarmac, disgorged us and our kit bags and left us there to wait for our flight. From the shade of a rusty, old Cosmic Air fuselage that had been dumped by the edge of the airfield we watched our chopper emerge from the mountain mist and slowly approach the airport before descending from the skies and skimming into place on the helipad. Then it was. Let’s get loaded and get out of here.

I was lucky and I got to sit in the front seat of the helicopter, right next to the pilot who twiddled and fiddled with all manner of dials and knobs to make the helicopter rise above the roofs of Kathmandu and head north towards cloud ridden Lukla. We soon left the city behind and floated over the terraced foothills, from this height looking for all the world like a contour map with the lines encircling the areas of higher ground. Then it was upwards through the valleys, following glacial river beds and leaping ever higher over and around the mountains that continually appeared to block our way. Description is difficult to come by to explain that flight, somehow the adjectives I have at my disposal simply don’t do it justice, we just seemed to keep getting higher and higher into the mountains that just kept appearing in front of us out of the clouds.

The continuing cloud cover meant that we were forever surprised by the next obstacle, the experienced pilot though knew exactly where he was going and what to expect. When I’d discussed the flight to Lukla with a pilot friend a few months before the trip he commented that only the world’s best pilots fly into Lukla, a comforting thought.

The small village finally appeared out of the low cloud, the runway getting ever closer through the mist and we were able to see for ourselves why the planes couldn’t fly into here in these conditions. We approached as a plane would, flying in over that deep river valley and heading for the beginning of the runway perched precariously on the valley’s edge. As the helicopter hovered above the runway and headed for its landing area to the right we couldn’t see the top of the mountain in front of us, in fact we couldn’t see more than a couple of hundred metres up that mountain.

We landed safely just to the right of the main runway and directly in front of the airport building. I half climbed, half jumped out of the helicopter and looked around at those mountains, or at least the lower slopes that I could see, I could only imagine where the tops of them might be. Shrouded in cloud and mist as it was this place had an almost eerie feel, as though we were about to enter a magical, mythical world where Harrison Ford would feel right at home.

It was time to head out into the great unknown and test myself.

Have you done something completely terrifying before? What was it? Did it change your life? Tell us in the comments below…