On the 4th October we moved up in the world. Our week of sightseeing was over and our two weeks of mountaineering (well, walking up a big valley in the mountains) was about to begin.

Our first treat was to move out of our £7 per night replacement hotel to the hotel that was part of our Exodus Adventures package – the Royal Singi. It was about a 10 minute taxi ride from one to the other. We checked in and immediately had a (hot) shower in our en-suite – bliss.

I’m afraid I have no pictures of the rest of this day – but it was notable, so read on.

After our shower we went down to reception and sort of hung around to see what would happen. Our joining up instructions were vague. After a while we noticed others hanging around too. Could these be our fellow travellers for the next fortnight? They didn’t look super-fit; good. Neither did we, I’m sure.

And so, nervously, we started introducing ourselves. I won’t name them all here and now – I’ll do that in the next few days’ blogs. But it was obvious we were a mix of nationalities and ages with some singles and some couples.

Then our leader made himself known (he did look super-fit!) and took us all up to a meeting room where he scrupulously checked our insurance – as it had to be valid for helicopter evacuation above 5400m of altitude. This is way outside the normal travel policy so we had taken out special super-expensive insurance before we left the UK. Without this level of cover we would not be allowed to continue.

We were also allocated some kit, Mary and I had rented down jackets and sleeping bags.

Then we had a briefing about what we could expect in the next two weeks. We were issued with maps of the Everest region and told roughly how the trek would operate.

Our leader then dropped the bombshell that we would probably not be going at all. What?? Well, unknown to us, the weather in the Everest area had been bad for days – with unseasonal cloud preventing any planes landing or taking off at Lukla – the airport we were due to fly to the following morning. This is not uncommon, but it means the whole logistical exercise of getting trekkers in and out of the region backs-up. We were told there were groups like ours who had been camping in Kathmandu airport for several days, hoping their flight would be announced at any time. And Lukla itself was filling up with trekkers as they finished their treks but couldn’t leave the village. It sounded horrendous. We knew from the trip details that in this situation sometimes the trek was truncated and the objective of Base Camp was abandoned. Or sometimes another trek in a different part of the country was offered.

There were a lot of glum faces around the table.

We were then taken to a local restaurant where we were served a traditional Nepalese meal and entertained by traditional Nepalese dancers. We were encouraged to partake of the Nepalese dancing ourselves which some of us did very self-consciously. Mary got chatting to another Exodus guide who made her go all weak at the knees when he blithely said “yes, I have climbed to the top of Everest … twice.” It puts my 4 trips to the top of Helvellyn to shame.

Back at the hotel we had a sleepless night as we had a 6:30am trip to the airport booked the next morning. Most of us thought this would be a fruitless exercise and might just be the start of us spending the next few days at the airport.