"You're the people who provide internet." Quote unquote. This is what the guy sitting across the aisle from me on the flight from Abu Dhabi to Kathmandu said when he saw the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) logo on my shirt. He and his colleague are from CONCERN Worldwide and deploying, like the rest of us, to support the earthquake emergency operation in Nepal.

When I first saw the alert on Saturday morning in my inbox re. the 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Nepal, I honestly thought it was a simulated emergency. For years we have been preparing, prepositioning, training for the ‘big one' which we knew was going to come. It was just over a week ago that there was an emergency preparedness workshop in Kathmandu with GSMA. With over 2,500 people already reported to have lost their lives, and countless more still unaccounted for, this is definitely not a simulated emergency.

ETC Coordinator, Oscar Caleman and ETC Technical Specialist, Aleksandar Dulovic from WFP FITTEST deployed to Kathmandu Monday morning along with Gisli Olafsson, NGO Coordinator from NetHope. Right now I'm on a flight with Rob Buurveld, ETC Technical Specialist from FITTEST as well as Gilles Hoffmann from emergency.lu and LP Svensson from Ericsson Response. You may remember them from such emergencies as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Ebola Crisis in West Africa and Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu.

Around about the time that we should be looking at making our descent, the captain tells us that we are going to be delayed – we are number 10 in a queue of flights landing in Kathmandu. Commercial, military, humanitarian flights are arriving to support what looks like will be a massive operation. We are here circling.

It will be strange landing in basically complete darkness. Power is down across the affected areas and everyone is relying on generators for electricity. Mobile phone networks are generally still operational, but as the diesel runs out, sites will go down making communications even more challenging.

There are kits of satellite equipment already in Kathmandu, prepositioned before the earthquake which we can start working with straight away. We are also carrying with us Wi-Fi distribution equipment from Ericsson Response, and have more satellite kits from emergency.lu for the actual connectivity arriving in a couple of days.

With so many flights trying to bring aid into the country, the runway in Kathmandu is very congested. We are still in a holding path with no real indication of when we will land. Given the huge number of emergency responders that are arriving in the country, this communications equipment is going to be vital. After all, we're the people who provide internet.

Subnote: after writing this we were rerouted to Lucknow, India to refuel because we had been circling for so long. We found out then that Oscar's flight had followed the same Abu Dhabi to Kathmandu airspace to Lucknow refuel path that we are doing. His flight however was then sent back to Abu Dhabi. Aleks and Gisli, who were on a different flight, were successful and made it into the country.

Sub subnote: yep, we heard just now that we are heading back to Abu Dhabi, too. Let's try again tomorrow. All the best to the teams already on the ground. We will be there to help as soon as we can.

By Mariko Hall, deployed as ETC Nepal IM Officer