Well, we arrived safely - bang on 24 hours door to door from Sydney (including 2 hours on ground in Brisbane and 4 in Bangkok). But a much shorter journey than the US contingent who we met up with in Bangkok - their trip was well over 30 hours.

The Yak & Yeti hotel is lovely - a real oasis tucked away amidst the hustle and bustle that is Kathmandu. Some of the less traveller trekkers found Kathmandu quite confronting - the poverty, dirt and madness that is similar to many Asian cities - but compared to New Dehli and Manilla that I’ve been to previously, Kathmandu is quite civilised.

Everyone copied with the long journey well and made it to the team briefing at 8pm last night, followed by dinner and then over half of the group made it into town to check out the nightlife - just a few quiet beers at Tom & Jerrys led by our trek leader Ade (a welshman who lives in Sydney when he’s not leading treks). All of the artists made it out with the rest of us, so it was a pretty fun night getting to know everyone. It looks like we have a good group and everyone will get along well.

Today’s been a free day (with the artists going to the recording studio), so a load of us took a walk into town and then to the “monkey temple”. Now it’s time to pack everything for the main game, which kicks off tomorrow with a 5am departure to the airport for our flight to Lukla. Fingers crossed that our flight can get in, as there’s been cloud in Lukla which has closed the airport for the last few days but we hear that some flights got in this morning.

The othe big news is that the grand finale concert has been confirmed for the main square - an outdoor venue that can take 25,000 and it’s going to be a free show, so it should be huge. Everest Rocks has been getting some good press over the last 24 hours. Yesterday the website took 210,000 hits (up from just a few thousand per day previously). After lots of interviews by Mike and James yesterday, we’re hoping for an even bigger number to be reported tonight.

Well, better go now and get packed. Send us lots of text messages via the website - they get read out each night, so it would be good to be more popular than everyone else!

It’s already shaping up to be an unforgettable experience. I’ll write more from Namche Bazaar in a couple of days when I next get access to the net.

Byee!

Cheers

Matt