Free A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth by Graham Ratcliffe

Consequently she was forced into taking unpaid leave, a supposed reluctant traveller.
    Her next stop had been the local travel agent. However, during my phone call from the Tibetan Plateau to north-east England she’d misheard my instructions. She told the lady sitting behind the desk that she wished to book flights to Nepal on Demon Airlines rather than Biman Airlines as I’d indicated. I can picture the look of bewilderment that must have appeared on the travel agent’s face. With a great deal of laughter, the confusion was overcome.
    Catherine had arrived at Heathrow Airport at the allotted time only to be told there would be a short unscheduled detour via Paris. It would just cause a slight delay. What had surprised Catherine was how few people actually boarded the plane at Heathrow: barely 50 or so. She assumed the flight to Paris was to pick up more travellers for the onward journey.
    As they sat on the tarmac at Charles de Gaulle Airport, she could hear the cargo hold being loaded. However, what perplexed her was that only two or three extra people joined the aircraft. The pilot’s voice came across the public-address system requesting all passengers move to the seats in the rear of the plane. He explained that Biman’s other aircraft, which flew out of Heathrow, was stranded in Bangladesh. They had been instructed to fly out a spare engine. This had now been loaded. Having all the passengers seated at the rear of the aircraft would assist greatly with take off.
    Catherine arrived at Kathmandu airport on time. We met with a huge embrace. A sometimes-fiery redhead, 5 ft ¼ in. tall – she was proud of the extra quarter inch – she was a foot shorter in height than me. We’d been married for more than eighteen years and had two teenage daughters, Angela and Amy, aged seventeen and fourteen respectively. Apart from running the family home, professionally Catherine cared for the elderly: demanding work that she found rewarding. She often regaled the family with stories of incredible journeys that some of these older men and women had undertaken in their youth. The adventures of our generation paled in comparison.
    We both relished the outdoor life and often went walking in the hills together at home. For Catherine, the higher mountains held no attraction. The effort to reach these lofty summits seemed to require all too much energy and misery for her liking. She was quite happy for me to undergo that by myself.
    For more than two months, since we’d last seen each other, we’d led completely different lives – each responsible for everything that happened within them. Although excited about seeing each other, we were aware that there would be a period of adjustment. Each would have to relinquish some of the recently acquired responsibilities. Nearly every person who goes away on long expeditions finds it difficult to settle back into normal everyday life. This takes quite some time and the process can often remain incomplete. Simmering away in the background is usually the urge to seek further adventure.
    As our taxi drove through the dusty streets, Catherine couldn’t stop laughing. With tears rolling down her cheeks, she recounted the epic saga from our satellite phone call to her eventual arrival in Kathmandu. Her smile was what I had missed.
    Catherine and I left Kathmandu and flew down to the Terai, the lowland area of southern Nepal where the Royal Chitwan National Park is located. For five days, we swapped the dust and fumes of the capital for the unbearable humidity of the period leading up to the monsoon.
    By the time we returned, most climbers were back from Everest. The party atmosphere was accentuated by the mounds of expedition equipment that now occupied every square inch of available space in the Gauri Shankar.
    We received a rapturous welcome from Lizzy, but her mood contrasted with that of her father, Tom Whittaker. He had come back bitterly disappointed. Russell Brice, who’d been climbing