Departure Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Lukla AirstripThe morning flight takes off without a glitch and we are in hot and polluted Kathmandu before lunch. A visit to Pashiputinath temple marks our goodbye for now. I am reminded of a passage from Fisher’s book:

The Tengboche Rimpoche told me that the tourists are somewhat like the torrents of rain that plague the north Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh that border Nepal: the floods come every year, and there is not much anyone can do about them. A dam is a good flood-control device because it can let out water in carefully controlled ways so that it can be used for constructive purposes- irrigating land or turning turbines to produce electricity. Building Lukla dynamited the dam that had held back the tourists.
(Fisher, 1990, p.152)