News release: 26 Apr, Lukla

At last we are on our way. We have a Nepali CAA permission 'to fly in the Everest region' for two weeks, apparently extendible so long as we don't make a fool of ourselves. We loaded everything into a huge MI-17 helicopter last night, the policy seems to be to fill them until they are full, luckily they have a capacity of 4 tonnes as all our kit plus fuel and oxygen was squashed in with bags of rice, drums of kerosine and of all things, cement! The thing has three or four crew, on this occasion, four; Russian Pilot, Nepali co-pilot and Russian flight engineer and loadmaster. There was standing room for one passenger, me.

45 minute flight into Lukla over some pretty awesome terrain. The crew pointed out the strips at Jiri and Paphlu which, apart from a couple of 'possibles' on ridges were the only possible microlight landing places.... Everest came into view a couple of times and then down into the Khumbu valley and the extraordinary strip at Lukla. Approach up the strip and then a hovering 180 to land on a small area next to the police post.

We managed to get all our kit out and in no time the helicopter was away for the next load of who-knows-what.