Trek to Everest? Don’t Mind if I Kathmandu!

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Ok, I admit, as much as I liked Nepal, I’m not actually still there. I’ve been such a lazy bugger in the blog writing stakes lately that, in a vain attempt to recompense you, dear reader, beloved fan, for your anguish in not having had anything to read these last two months, I’ve written not one but TWO blogs! You are at this point allowed to express your appreciation.

Now, where was I? That’s right. Kathmandu. Finally escaped the delights of Pokhara and heading to the top of the world. And so it was that on a brisk September morning my travelling/trekking companion (Tenzing Norgay to my Hillary if you will) Stuart and I found ourselves on a 20 seat Yeti Airlines puddle jumper bound for the heights and sites of Lukla, the short-cutter’s start of the Everest Base Camp Trek. Having of course once again prepared for this trek in the best possible way (we met up with Simon and Aimee for ‘just a few’ brews the night before), we decided that the usual two day trek to Namche Bazaar could be easily accounted for in just over a half, so within minutes of disembarkation we were off like the proverbial frog/sock combination as deep into the beautiful temperate forest (by flying we got to skip the tropical, read stinking hot, forests this time) as we could. It only took about an hour to realise that DEEP into the forest wasn’t actually the way to Everest Base Camp, and our decision to trek without a guide wasn’t looking like the smartest thing Stuart ever suggested, but a quick retrace and we were back on track. A steep track that is. One that no less than Sir Edmund Hillary himself described as “formidable”, and not-yet-beknighted Warren Shaw described as “you’ve got to be f&%#ing joking” - the approach to Namche Bazaar (a truly bizarre little bazaar perched on a cliff-side) from the valley 800m below. But we made it, and enjoyed a rest day (oops I mean acclimatisation day) as a reward, although not a hot shower, as the entrepeneurial Sherpa people like to charge for them in these parts.

The exit from Namche Bazaar gave us a perfect example of what to expect from the rest of the trek. Straight uphill. And of course the world’s most amazing mountain scenery, trekking halfway up a valley featuring a 3500m vertical panorama from the valley floor to the summit of Thamserku at 6700m on the opposite side, for example. But you (who are jealous) will be pleased to know that the rain and clouds set in for the next two days as we ascended to Tengboche, Pangboche and Dingboche (‘boche’ either means ‘ridge’ or ‘place to build millions of guesthouses’, I can’t remember), deep into the Sherpa’s Khumbu homeland, in the footsteps of the first successful Everest expedition, and of course the few hundred people who conquer the mountain every year these days.

The rain gave us time to get to know the locals, sleep in the bar of one guesthouse because the owner took the room keys to America (?!?), and fashion a chess set from pebbles. The altitude gave us time to explore the extremes to which the lack of oxygen to the brain affects one’s sanity (yes, answering every question with “don’t mind if I Kathmandooo!” does get a little tedious after a few days). The cloud cover only made the 360° views from Dingboche all the better when the clouds eventually lifted, revealing a panorama that included Lhotse (the world’s 4th highest peak) and Ama Dablam (the new leading contender for the “best mountain Warren has laid eyes on” awards), and which stayed as we ascended for two more days, through one or two more ‘boches, before we found ourselves standing on a patch of the Khumbu glacier, amidst ice pinnacles and crashed helicopters which mark Everest Base Camp. Not that it really is all it is cracked up to be, given that you can’t actually from there see the mountain for which this is your base, but it was pretty damned cool just the same. The following morning we attained ‘our Everest’, the rocky peak of Kala Pattar at 5,550m, and the best sunrise you could lay your eyes on, rising over the peak of the world’s highest mountain which had emerged between Nuptse and the northwest summit as we ascended. The second time I’d seen the top of the world was equally impressive, made all the better as we sparked a celebratory bidi.

There really was no topping this experience, so we scrapped our plans to hike a further week in this beautiful area, and headed back to Namche Bazaar for, well, a few celebratory drinks with some new found friends (its amazing the places you meet lager-swilling rugby louts these days ‘init Alex), and some obligatory silly dancing. The hangover made the walk back to Lukla eerily familiar, except it was downhill this time, and I had recovered in time to truly enjoy the experience of a small twin prop plane taking off by essentially driving off a cliff, the Hillary-built runway at Lukla being what it is, as we returned to Kathmandu, just as the trekking season began in earnest, and the snobby package trekkers were plodding in in droves.

One more week in Kathmandu turned out to be just about enough for Nepal, as we booked passage to Bangkok three months after I arrived in this country for a quick three week visit. But we still had time to make a few new drinking friends, fit in an Everest Steak House special or two, more than one night at Tom&Jerry’s bar, another winning night at the Casino, a couple of fights with rowdy rickshaw drivers and to witness Kathmandu morph into Tel-Aviv literally overnight. Not to mention another encounter with a certain Bavarian beauty...

But it all had to end, and Nepal sent us off in style. In the style we’ve come to expect from this slightly disorganised country, as our Air Nepal International flight, in a rickety PB Air jet, with an ambiguous destination (“did I really hear him say ‘Kuala Lumpar’?”) and non-Nepali speaking hostesses, sat on the extremely busy Kathmandu airstrip for about 4 hours, and turned our quick hop to Bangkok into an overnight epic. Not that we minded as we saw out my first few hours back in the city of Angels in a bar on Khao San Rd: same same, but different.

Bangkok had that feel to it. The end. The end of an Asian adventure that had spanned 7 months, 5 countries, 8 plane trips, 5 Ashes tests, countless priceless friends, more mountains than you could poke a stick at, Poms, Deutsche, Frogs, Seppos, Kiwis, “tha Dutch”, oodles of buses, boats and buffaloes, numerous bikes, treks and yaks, tube rides, pub crawls, snow-caps, happy shakes, rivers, jungles, waterfalls, monkeys, barley fields, break-ups, hook-ups, hangovers, pretty much the lot. All except a ping-pong show, so at least we had something to do in our last week in Bangkok. Well that, and of course to buy an airline ticket to Europe, so I could do it all again in another continent...

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