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Flying over Mt Everest!

When I knew I was going to Nepal to volunteer for a couple of weeks I had my heart set on taking a flight seeing tour over Mt Everest. I couldn’t come all this way from New Zealand and NOT, right?

Afterall, the highest mountain in the world features on the 7 wonders of the world list, which I wrote about. I’ve seen four so far.

Mt Everest from the cockpit
From the cockpit!

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So I added a couple of days on to my Nepal visit in Kathmandu, booked a little hotel via Booking.com that cost under $50 a night (it’s cheap here!) and stayed in Thamel, close enough to the main markets for shopping and eating.

While I was in Pokhara, I had a local travel agent that I met through the volunteering company as they use him to make bookings for them, Tara Gautam of Skylark Himalayan Travel Agency, make the booking for me as the planes are small and I only had a couple of days.

You can book your one-hour Mt Everest flight yourself though, departing from Kathmandu.

When I got to Kathmandu, the hotel driver met me at Tribhuvan International Airport and I arranged for him to take me back EARLY the next morning for my “expedition”.

Himalaya mountains from plane

It was the end of the rainy season, so there was always the chance the clouds would be closed in and no Everest trips would go ahead. But not today!

I flew Yeti Airlines and paid about US$200 for the hour-long early morning flight (it departed around 7am) which included all of us being able to visit one by one into the cockpit (where I made this video) and ended with glass of champagne in the air.

Here’s my video and a few photos!

There she is! At 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) Mt Everest (also known as Sagarmatha and Chomolungma) stands proudly among his mates of the Himalayas – on the right by the propeller.

There are other astonishingly huge mountains nearby too like the third and fourth highest mountains in the world: Kangchenjunga at 8,586m (28,169 ft) and Lhotse at 8,516m (27,940), behind K2 which in Pakistan at 8,611m or 28,251 ft.

So the whole flight from Kathmandu over the Himalayas is just an eye-popping photo-clicking hour and while the plane has two seats each side, they only book window seat passengers, and it doesn’t matter what side you sit as when you get to Everest, they then loop around (not over it!) and you see the other side of these snow capped mountains.

Yeti Airlines mountain flight

We nearly tipped the plane over looking out at the swathe of mountains, crowned by Mt Everest!

In the cockpit over Mt Everest

My camera was accidentally on reverse when I stepped into the cockpit and began clicking furiously. But I kept this one as my face says it all!!

We all only had one minute in there each and I was SO excited to be second to last of the 20 or so of us and got to see Everest over the dashboard.

Mt Everest from cockpit

There she is: Mt Everest from the Yeti Airlines cockpit! The tallest peak in the distance is what you’re looking at.

Mt Everest flight seeing

We flew up and looped around so both sides of the plane got to see Mt Everest.

Champagne on Yeti mountain flight

Then the host served us all champagne and we toasted our ‘summit’ of the tallest mountain in the world – without even breaking a sweat!

Pin this to your Travel Board!

If you’re interested in my volunteering in Nepal, click here for some of those posts and photos >>Save

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Denise Irvine

Monday 11th of September 2017

Don't ever lose your enthusiasm Megan!! It is infectious.

Megan

Monday 11th of September 2017

Oh you're such a sweetheart Denise - thank you! x

Zascha

Sunday 3rd of September 2017

This looks amazing! Something I will definitely do some time!! It looks gorgeous!

Megan

Tuesday 5th of September 2017

You must!

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Hi, I'm Megan Singleton and I'm the word slinger of this travel blog as well as on radio in NZ every Sunday. Former Travel Editor at Yahoo NZ and current freelance writer for a few newspapers and mags from time to time, I set off on this travel writing journey 20 years ago and I've pretty much always got a suitcase half packed (or half un-packed!) I'd love you to join me on Facebook or Twitter and sign up for my newsletters if you want loads of travel tips, advice and deals!