LOGISTICS TEAM BLOG ? Inaugural Entry

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Well, we?ve finally made it to Kathmandu. After 2 months of continuous packing, sometimes 7 days a week and with a few 22 hour days thrown in, all we can do now is wait for Nepalese Customs to clear the freight and allow us to start organising it for the next stage of the operation ? lifting it up the mountain by helicopter.

In all, we have air freighted 913 containers out to Kathmandu with Qatar Airways, consisting of 140,000 individual items, with a total weight of 20.5 tons! Each container has had to be packed, coded, weighed, have 2 address labels stuck to it, numbered, marked and a list of its contents written onto a spreadsheet, which is now 280 pages long.

The equipment list is quite staggering and includes 236 BOC medical gas bottles, 102 Exide car batteries, 34 Panasonic Toughbook laptops, 23 Honda generators, 10 Lode exercise bikes, 5 DRASH shelters and 2.1 kilometers of electrical cable!

As Logistics Manager, I have been fortunate enough to be working with 2 exceptionally efficient and hard working team members ? Lee Rays, who has had the unenviable job of adding all the information onto the spreadsheet and Rhys Bevan, who has tirelessly cut out the foam from 90% of our 207 Trifibre tough cases, in which various pieces of equipment are carried for protection. I would like to thank the rest of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest team who have all mucked in, but I must take this opportunity to say a huge thanks to David Howard who was made an honorary member of the Logistics Team for all the late nights he spent doing the most dull packing jobs in order to help us out.

After a well-earned day off, the Logistics team, donning their official Expedition T-shirts with ?First In?Last Out? logo, checked in with Qatar Airways at Heathrow Terminal 3. It was Saturday 3rd March and our initial destination was Doha on the edge of the Qatar peninsula. Matt Parkes, from Jagged Globe, our link man to the air freight company, joined us there to fly out with us.

Spirits were high and it was time for a well-earned drink. We had almost 6 hours to kill and the drinks were free. We all had good intentions of making use of the unlimited alcohol supply, but within 2 hours we were all snoring our heads off!

By 4pm on the afternoon of Sunday 4th March we arrived safely in Kathmandu and were greeted by the hustle and bustle of taxi drivers all vying for our business. We knew that ?Kit? Spencer, the Jagged Globe Agent in Nepal, wouldn?t let us down and a taxi was already waiting for us.

We dodged our way through the Kathmandu traffic, bicycles, 3-wheel vans, motorbikes and goats all trying to squeeze through the same tiny gap in the traffic. It was only when the Police were standing in the middle of the road controlling the traffic that there seemed to be some sense of order and road discipline. As soon as we passed the Police though, the chaos started all over again.

Kit greeted us at the hotel entrance and we sat down for a well-earned cup of tea. Dinner last night was a delicious Chinese buffet, with an ?all you can eat? policy ? we certainly got our money?s worth!

After 24 hours on the road we turned in early, even to find that there were hot water bottles in our beds. They certainly look after you here.

Today, we rose at 8am, after 11 hours of comfortable sleep, had another superb meal and then set about organising getting the freight list ready for Custom?s clearance. From the online tracking service, we know that some of it has already arrived in Nepal, while the remainder is being transferred to the second flight back in Doha.

It?s been quite a relaxing start to our stay in Nepal ? the hard work is soon to come.

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Blog by Mac Mackenney