The Kathmandu Laboratory

Today we were allowed access to the room that will become the Kathmandu laboratory for the next 3 months. Problem was, only 227 extra pieces arrived on yesterday?s Qatar flight, so that brings the total to 594. This is still some way short of our total consignment of 853 individual containers, so nothing can be released from Customs. It?s not even as if we can work on the equipment that has made it to Nepal. There is plenty of time in hand still, but we?ve visited a fair bit of Kathmandu city and it would be good to have a change of scenery and get up into the mountains.

Still, we cleared the ?lab? of unwanted furniture and laid it out as per Denny Levett?s plan. Denny is one of the two Research Leaders of this expedition, as well as being the Chief Medical Officer. She has provided detailed plans of how every laboratory is to be set up, what furniture is needed and where the various pieces of equipment are to be placed.

A local newspaper reporter came around to the hotel the other day and interviewed us. He wanted a ?team? photo, so we set up the camera and posed, while wearing our Caudwell Xtreme Everest fleeces.

I spent the afternoon catching up on paperwork. The internet here is fairly slow, so spent some time sat in front of the computer answering emails. By 6pm though we were all getting a bit edgy, so decided to go for a run. It was a great laugh and a good way to see the scenery. 3 small boys chased after us and almost overtook us at times while wearing flip-flops! After an hour of beating the streets, we returned to the Summit Hotel absolutely shattered. All 4 of us are very competitive and the return run turned into a race.

This evening Paul and I popped down into town to collect some hand-made T-shirts we had ordered only yesterday for the Logistics Team. For a mere 500 Nepalese Rupees each (about ?3.85), we had an embroidered logo to our design on the front and the team name on the back. The guy in the shop makes these on an old Singer sewing machine like my mum used to have. I assumed that it would be done on a large computer controlled machine at another location, but the work he produced with just the single needle was superb.