Over Eid vacation, I went on a 10 day trek to Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal. Weather was perfect, company was excellent, and being the very start of trekking season, we ran into only a handful of other trekkers. For anyone who has climbed the Grouse Grind in Vancouver, imagine doing that, up and down, five times a day, for 10 days, and you will have an idea of what I did. Sounds grueling, but with views of lush green terraces, enchanted forests, a myriad of waterfalls, and of course some of the world’s most spectacular peaks, you almost don’t notice the burn in the legs. That is, until you realize you can’t move them to get out of your sleeping bag the next morning. Looking forward to a nice cold Everest beer at the end of the day wasn’t a bad motivator either. But what I really want to talk about is the journey home to Bangladesh from Nepal.On October 8th, at 9:00 am, I boarded a Yeti Airlines flight going from Pokhara (the starting point for most treks in the Annapurna region) to Kathmandu. From there I was to transfer to a Biman (Bangladesh Airlines) flight back to Dhaka. Well upon landing in Kathmandu, we learned that a Yeti Air flight going from Kathmandu to Lukla (the starting point for most excursions to Everest) had crashed killing all on board but the pilot. Lukla is a small airport with a 60 ft wide runway set on a slope, and a 2100 ft drop at one end. It was actually built in the 1960s by Sir Edmund Hillary to facilitate expeditions to Everest.

With this knowledge fresh on my mind, I embarked on one of the scariest plane rides of my life! Biman has a reputation for being unreliable, disorganized, and not necessarily dangerous, but everyone I know who has flown on it has a story to tell. Well I can honestly say I thought I wasn’t going to live to tell any story, but here it is.

Of course boarding the aircraft, I found someone in my seat, which was pretty predictable. I asked where I should sit and the flight attendants just kept saying, “free seating, free seating”. This means, sit wherever there is one available basically. I had run into two backpackers, a rare sight in Bangladesh, and we found three seats together in the middle of the plane. I think the most unnerving thing for me on a Biman flight right at the beginning is the announcement. All plane announcements are pretty much the same: estimated flight duration, arrival time, weather at destination, etc. Biman announcements end in, “inshallah”, which I think I have mentioned before, means, “god-willing”. I would really rather not leave my fate in the air in the hands of god, but I guess that is just a personal preference!!

I am not sure if taking off from Kathmandu airport is a little different from other airports in that there are some of the world’s highest mountains an arm’s reach away, but for whatever reason, when we took off, the plane went from horizontal to vertical in a matter of seconds; I could have sworn I was in a rocket blasting off, not in an airplane with the gradual ascent I am accustomed to. It didn’t end there. The turbulence was some of the worst I have ever experienced with the plane just dropping out of the sky over and over again; there were people screaming as if it was an amusement park ride and even the flight attendants were white knuckled and pale faced. The best part though, was landing in Dhaka. It was not a gradual decent. The plane was coming in fast and furious, and what looked to me like an odd angle. We were teetering back and forth so much I was seeing Dhaka to the left of me, then to the right of me, over and over again. I was clenching my teeth and saying goodbye to my family just in case, and just seconds before touch down, I look out one of the windows and I can see the tarmac. I am praying for a safe landing, and what happens next? Well, there is a huge shift in momentum, and back into the air we go!!!!

Landing had been aborted, perhaps we had overshot the runway, coming in too fast, I don’t know. All I knew was the feeling of dread in the bottom of my stomach that I was never going to make it off this plane. A couple of Bangladeshi passengers actually got out of their seat at this point in confusion and started to walk about the cabin! The backpackers next to me, I think, were enjoying themselves! But then you have to have some nerve to couch-surf in Dhaka to begin with. The Irish one sitting next to me let me hold his hand for the second attempt at landing. Meanwhile, the Bangladeshi man next to me was asking me why I was on this flight. Didn’t I know Bangladeshi pilots are inexperienced? Didn’t I know all their planes are refurbished, recycled, old planes from other carriers that no longer deemed them to be safe? Those words of comfort were just what I needed to hear at that moment.

Well I am here writing this entry, so I guess it means we finally landed. Apparently, the first attempt was aborted because there are two indicators in the cockpit to signal the wheels are fit for landing; one was indicating to land, and the other was indicating not to land. In a split second decision the pilots decided against landing, but I have no idea what they did to “fix” the wheel situation. Perhaps it is best not to know.

In fact other Biman stories make mine pale in comparison. I would choose my flight experience over the one a few weeks back where all the oxygen masks fell out of the ceiling, or the one where people lit up their gas cooker and started cooking on the flight, or even the one where a passenger lit a pipe in the back of the plane and when someone complained, they were reassured it was alright, because he is the pilot and the pilot is allowed to smoke….but who was flying the plane? Everyone is allowed one bad Biman experience in their lives, but I think one is enough.