5 more days...

In 5 days, we'll be off. Everything seems to be going well: the training, the planning, and the various preparations.

However, it should be said that the behaviour of some of the people who're not going to Nepal, leaves much to be desired. Last night, a former life-guard colleague Ali/Abbas, rightly called Elvis "Findi Elvis".

We caught Elvis (in the picture) on Hulhumale' with his "kite". As Muha remarked, some of us will spend their entire life at sea-level on a little board between Hulhumale and Club Med. Sad, really.

It seems Elvis, Shaaziya and Saffalhey are more than a little pissed off with us for taking action to achieve our Himalayan dreams, and are in close contact with each other to joke about our trip. Meanwhile, Saffalhey reportedly told Shaaziyya that Muha and I sabotaged our previously planned expedition to sneak off by ourselves this year.

Not that this bothers us in the least; any publicity is good publicity, especially as I might now take my video camera along, to film the expedition. Who knows, we might end up with a documentary starring Muha and entitled "A Maldivian on a Mountain". Any buyers?

It's not the aim of this blog to stir trouble, but Elvis and co should be supporting us as we approach the end of our training. A cheesecake costs 50 Rufiyaa which, divided among them, would be just over 15 Rufiyaa each. Of course if they expect to share it, they'll have to buy two!

Meanwhile, not a word from Thumma. This is worse than being made fun of.

Other friends have been more encouraging. Eagan, Hilath, Sharif, and even Vishu have at different times joined in our training.

We've got two great backpacks, loaned to us by a friend of Muha's. We've also got ourselves warm clothing, thanks to Shareef and Narco. Incidently, Shareef claims the photo in the first post was taken by him. This is not my recollection; I think I took the image on his Mavica. It's true that Shareef did take a picture, but his had Muha on the rock (Muha was a model back then and not the photographer he is now). To complicate things further, Muha has also been hinting that neither Shareef nor me, but HE took the picture!

Back to the trek, we're in the final stages of preparation. All we need to do now is pack our cameras, bags, and the medical kit.