 Ed Viesturs' Quest for the 8,000 meter peaks |
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Friday, March 31, 2000
 Viesturs | |
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Hi it's Ed Viesturs reporting on the Mountain Zone. It's Friday morning, March 31st, and it looks like we'll be still staying in Kathmandu for today. Although, we had hoped to leave this morning because of some glitch or whatever with bureaucracy or something like that, which we can't really figure out; we're not able to leave today. We'll be leaving tomorrow morning. But when you're in Nepal, just like in the mountains, you've got to go with the flow and try not to let it frustrate you.
We spent the day yesterday finishing our packing. We've got about 20 loads of food and equipment between the four of us packed into 30-kilogram porter loads. Last minute shopping that type of thing and also yesterday afternoon we had our official briefing with the Ministry of Tourism. And we got our $10,000 piece of paper, which is our expedition permit, which allows us then to climb Annapurna. So that's a little bit of a ceremony that we had yesterday.
Yesterday night we ended up at the infamous, world-famous Everest bar, the Rum Doodle. Veikka and Neal are able then to also sign their names on the board where many, many Everest climbers have signed their names. And what we just found out also last night is once you sign the board and you've shown that you've climbed Everest, you get free food and drink there forever. So, [laughs] we'll probably end up eating there and drinking there for the rest of our lives and never going to any other place in Kathmandu. So that was a lot of fun.
Today, since we had hoped to leave today, we don't really have any plans, maybe a little bit of sightseeing, shoot some photos, shoot some videos and just relax, and get ready to leave tomorrow morning. So thanks for that and I'll be calling in again probably at the end of the day tomorrow after we have done our drive and have reached the village of Beni. Signing out.
— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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