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Good Morning, this is Eric Simonson reporting live to you from the rooftop of the Manaslu Hotel in beautiful, smoggy Kathmandu, Nepal. It has not rained here for the better part of three or four months, and the mountains are very bare and dry this year. Mount Everest was black flying in — you could see it looming in on the horizon.

Today we wrap up our last day in Kathmandu. We're going to have a team meeting here in a few minutes and go over chores and errands to be accomplished today including last minute packing and shopping, although later this morning... [we'll be meeting our] Sherpas at Bodhnath for our puja.

We are going to meet the Rinpoche from Thyangboche who is down here and have our Kathmandu puja. We will also buy prayer flags and juniper and some rice and items for our puja at Base Camp. We'll need to have all of our luggage ready to go by this afternoon to pack into trucks because we're going to be leaving very early in the morning tomorrow. So far everything is going well, the team is all here and we're looking forward to our departure tomorrow and finally heading to Zhangmu. That's it for me. See ya.

—Eric Simonson, Expedition Leader

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