The luxury of an A/C

Ok, it's 2 p.m. and I'm writing from a dingy internet cafe in Dubai in temperatures exceeding 40 deg C and where the humidity must be in excess of 95%. (No instruments used here but the stickiness of it all says it all).

We're housed at a (Maltese) friend's place who lives with his family on the 22-storey apartment in Dubai. Glenn Doublesin was kind enough to meet us at the airport at 1.30 a.m., take us to his place and provide dinner and the childrens' bedroom in the bliss of an airconditioner. I think that the 'luxury' of having a clean bed (with a matress) with access to a normal bathroom and a refrigerator will sink in soon enough. Until then we're making the best out of it.

My climbing colleague Gregory is lazying about in a swimming pool on the roof of the skyscraper. Thing is that the pool is only open for women on Thursdays and he was already told off by a woman using the pool... so he came timidly back down. But then he decided to have another go and that's the last I've seen of him.

We decided to fine-tune our expedition equipment list this morning, so we 'abused' of Glen's hospitality and spread out all our stuff in his spacious living/dining room. I removed a few pieces of stuff (which I will leave in Dubai for it to be taken back to Malta by friends in due time) and also maximised the weight of our expedition stuff in our hand luggage to try to reduce the luggage weight. The luggage weight now stands at 39kg, which added to the 12kg of my hand luggage (a haversack) puts it way beyond the 20+7 kg allowed on the Royal Nepali Airlines flight. I put the toiletries and other stuff we can easily replace in Kathmandu (wet wipes, shaving foam, etc.) in a separate bag. Should the airline clerk decide to charge us the full cost we'll give the stuff to him/her and replace it in Kathmandu.

A few reflections after we departed from Malta some eight hours ago. Well, I was pleasantly surprised with the huge reception and interest from the press. I think our freezer 'stunt' must have done the trick in generating awareness on the fact that our expedition may be considered 'extreme' - which it undoubtedly is. Living in a tent for seven weeks in a location in Malta is a daily struggle in itself, let alone when you're suffering from the effects of altitute, freezing temperatures and gale force winds that would want to sweep you off the mountain into Tibet. To this add the fact that we'll be eating food that's not familiar and of course the physical exertion of having to haul yourself up an 8000m mountain.

But, still, we call it fun :) We have been asked 'but why are you doing it?' Numerous times and the best reply I can give to anybody (and myself) is .... it's a sport. Why do people run marathons? I think that intrinsically it's the same reason as ours. We love doing it; we're good at it; and the satisfaction of reaching the target beats all the sacrifices that one has to do to get there. I think the saying 'no pain, no gain' applies perfectly in this case.

What's next? We'll probably laze about this afternoon (possibly in the pool if available) and then meet some Maltese expats in Dubai this evening (after sunset as it's Ramadan and it's forbidden to eat OR DRINK (WATER) in public during the day) for dinner before we take the midnight flight to Kathmandu. The third member of the group Robert took off from London last night and will be in Kathmandu tonight i.e. before we get there. We'll meet tomorrow morning and then go through the motions of getting a climbing permit for Cho Oyu and visas for Tibet.

One reflection.... I was looking out of Glenn's 22 storey balcony this morning and the skyline is littered with skyscrapers, most of them being built. Dangling on scaffolding perched to these skyscrapers-in-construction I could make dimunitative figures of construction workers braving the scorching midday heat, placing sun-exposed red-hot steel bars in place to prepare the next storey. My heart went out to these guys who have to do this work day-in day-out for a living... what could be worse? Being muslims I understand that they're not allowed to eat or drink anything all day long! And here I was, an aspiring mountaineer, moving from one building's shadow to the other, walking five minutes to find an air-coinditioned internet cafe and thinking it's a chore!

Well, everything's relative I guess, In a couple of days time I'll probably be begging for some of the sun's warmth.