HIMALAYA - AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TOP OF THE WORLD! MOUNT EVEREST BASECAMP

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EVEREST BASE CAMP EXPO

(Luckily Liane kept a mini-diary each day, so this can be detailed for your reading pleasure… Enjoy!!!)

DAY 1 - 24/4/09
Kathmandu to Lukla to Benkar / 2800metres / 70%!O(MISSING)xygen / 12Km Trek / 5am to 2pm

We were greeted at our hotel at 5am for the 6am flight by our guide Dambar, but it was already not a very good start as WE had to pay the airport tax, which was supposedly included, what a surprise! Also the airline that we had been told that was more unreliable etc (and therefore cheaper) turned out to be our airline, even though we had been told that we were on the more reliable (and more expensive) airline!! Very big surprise… NOT! It really is impossible to get what you actually agree and pay for in Asia. Impossible.

We arrived in Lukla (2,800m) on a very steep landing (it has to be up hill to slow the planes down! And then taking off it gives them a running start!!! eeeep!!!) After the hair raising landing we found out that the return ticket was in fact booked for the 14th day of our 16 day trip… surprise surprise surprise… what next!?
Good thing we had already left Kathmandu otherwise we wouldn’t have carried on with what was turning out to be a very bad scamming tour (again!)

Not much else to do but press on the trail. After some breakfast we headed off to Benkar (2,700m; 70% oxygen) at around 8.30am, we made it there around 2pm, in good time including a stop for lunch around midday.

The walk was very up and down, having to go up the hills, then back down to cross to the next hill etc. wish they could just build a cable car, or at least have the bridges at the height of the trail not down in the valley!
The views were spectacular throughout the day and the weather was great and clear, very glad that we could see so much, very encouraging. Saw many cute ‘jopke’ (half cow half yak) carrying loads and porters carrying heaps in their baskets that weigh more than they do, all being held by rope on their heads!!!

Gareth carried our bag (we thought it would be easier with one bag between us) but his knee was quite sore after the trek so we thought it would be better to get a porter for the remainder of the trek (an easy 20kg for our porter to be - ‘Ranji’)
We settled into a cute little lodge with great views of the mountains from the bedroom.
Went to sleep very early, ready for an early start the next day…

DAY 2
Benkar to Namche Bazar / 3500m / 64%!o(MISSING)xygen / 14Km Trek / 8am - 1pm
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The walk started off ok, back down and along the river, after that it was up and more up, for about 3hrs! It was quite hard work, but we had lots of little mini-breaks to catch our breath before carrying on to the next corner! This overall was quite a hard part of the trek more so because of the height and lack of oxygen. The whole place looked like the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. Very green with deep valleys cutting through. We arrived in Namche about an hour behind schedule, but we’re not in any rush, rather get there late than not at all!

Another room with a view of the beautiful mountains surrounding us.
Our porter Ranji got to Namche 2hrs before us, and by the time we arrived he went back off to Benkar to get his shoes to be back the next day, so for him it was a 9hr trip!

The porters are probably the hardest working people on the planet and probably the most under paid. Ranji asked for Rp700/day (about £7). To be honest, if he had asked for double we would have gladly paid, it did almost feel like slave-labour that we contributing to and we weren’t exactly comfortable with having to hire him, but at least we were giving him what he asked, no haggling, and also putting into the Sherpa community.

(and for those of you who don’t know, which I guess is all, as we didn’t know… but Sherpa’s aren’t porters, that is their family name, and its is pretty much only the Sherpa family that live in the Sagarmatha community, they are the only people allowed to own property/land, everyone else can only rent etc)


DAY 3 - ACCLIMITISATION DAY
Everst View Hotel / 300 metre climb / 2 hours

We walked up to the Everest View Hotel, the highest 5* hotel in the world at 3,880m (60% oxygen).
The point of the walk up was to get acclimatised to the height and lack of oxygen that we would feel for the rest of the trek.
You could definitely feel the difference, much shorter of breath, much quicker heart beats.

We made it up in very good time, usually takes people 2hrs and we did it in 1.5hours!
The view of Everest wasn’t that great as there were clouds over the summit of its peak, but we didn’t care, it was our fist glimpse of the tallest mountain in the world so it was still quite amazing, and the rest of the view wasn’t bad either!

Gareth and I stayed there a while drinking hot lemon squash and slurping a tomato and garlic soup (garlic and ginger is very good food for high altitude as it keeps you warm inside apparently - we didn’t notice much change in temperature though!)
We then walked over to the cliff edge and watched 4 eagles soaring in the sky, they were so majestic and beautiful, just mesmerising to watch them in all their glory, in the beauty of the Himalayas, and it is truly beyond description. After 10 minutes or so we headed back down the steep path to the lodge.

DAY 4 - LONG ROAD TO PANGBOCHE
Namche to Pangboche / 3500metres to 3200metres and back up to 3930metres / 60%!O(MISSING)xgen / 15Km Trek / 7.00am to 2.00pm

Early start we headed off around the mountain which was quite nice as it was flat but after a while we started to head down - and fast. All that effort of climbing up to Namche was about to be wasted, we dropped from 3500metres right back down to 3000metres to than have to climb back up to 3900metres. What a climb it was too. Very steep, dusty and not much of a path to follow. What made it worse was the fact you would see porters making ease of it the whole way. Around 2 hours later we made it up to the top at a place called Tengboche where we had lunch and enjoyed the views over looking the valley of which we just crossed and painfully climbed.

Half hour later we headed off on the much shorter route to Pangboche.. yet again with in minutes all of our hard work of climbing the previous very steep valley was going to waste as we dropped again a few hundred meters. It was nearly bringing tears to our eyes just thinking about having to climb back up when getting near to our final destination. Liane started to get a headache on the way, a sign of altitude sickness and the last hour went a little slower. Luckily the slope gained but it wasn’t any where near as bad as the previous. So finally heading in to Pangboche bit of a stone-age town with not a lot happening we settled in to our lovely basic very cold lodge.

DAY 5 - EVER CLIMBING HIGHER TO DINGBOCHE
Pangboche to Dingboche / 3930metres to 4410metres / 58%!O(MISSING)xygen / 10km Trek / 8.15am to 11.30am

Liane suffered quite bad headache in the night, and Gareth had to wake up Dambar to get advice, he gave and Ibuprofen which worked and said that if it got worse we would have to leave to get to lower ground to more oxygen, but we managed to get back to sleep.

So we took this day quite easy so as not to aggravate the sickness, it was an easy walk in any case, we left at 8.30 and arrived in Dingboche. About 3 hours later.
The walk was uneventful, very gradual and so good to acclimatize as it’s not such a dramatic incline.
Arrived in Dingboche and had a great lunch of fresh home-cooked chips with fried egg!

We had a quick nap but Liane again woke with a more severe headache. It subsided after some pain killers and managed to have dinner, but she woke up several times in the night in pain as well.


DAY 6
DINGBOCHE TO THUKLA / 4410m - 4620m / 55%!O(MISSING)xygen / 5km Trek / 8.30am - 11.30am

We left a little later than usual as we were uncertain what to do because of Liane’s headaches. Normally this day would have been another acclimatisation day, but we did definitely not want to go up a hill just to come back down and go back up the same hill to leave the next day!

So we instead decided to press onto Thukla, which is not that much higher than Dingboche, and easy walk away so if worse came to worse it would be easy to come back if Liane needed to get lower.

Liane took some Diamox to help with the headaches. At high altitude you get too much liquid on the brain causing it to swell and get headaches and sometimes if not treated you can die, the Diamox makes you pee, a lot, and therefore eases pressure on the brain.
We still made it in good time, even though there were times when Liane’s head was very very sore, and we had to keep stopping for her ‘nature calls’ but we took our time and didn’t go hard.

Thukla is a very small collection of sheds and one lodge at the base of the Khumbu glacier. Most people use this place as a lunch stop. However on this day everyone seemed to have the same plan. SLEEP!

We had an early lunch and a nap and Liane felt great after! What a relief! So we were hopeful that the next day we would press onto Lobuche (one stop from the base camp town) with no problems

While we were having our evening tea we saw a man that we had passed along the way in a very bad state, the poor chap could barely stand on his own two feet and had about 4 porter/guides to escort him down to lower ground, very bad case of altitude sickness.

DAY 7
THUKLA - GORAK SHEP / 4620m - 5200m / 52%!O(MISSING)xygen / 10Km Trek / 7.15am - 12.45pm

We had a good night sleep, and Liane did not have any headache at all this morning, so the feeling was good. We set off ready for a day of trekking, first problem was the bolder field climb. This was hard, long, and steep, and had no particular path. We had seen this route the day before and from the bottom it doesn’t look hard until you notice tiny tiny people trekking through and then the whole thing is put perspective. HUGE!! After a mammoth climb with lots of panting we made it up the hill in about 55mins (good time, people usually take over an hour) the path was flatter then all the way to Lobuche (where we were meant to stay). We arrived at 9.15. This was far too early to be finishing for the day and with nothing to do or read we wanted to press on, and on we pressed, but after a spot of tea!

Gareth started to get a headache around 4800m though, so we gave him a Diamox straight away.

The route closer to Gorak Shep is across the glacier and very rocky and lots of boulders. It is quite hard due to the severe lack of oxygen, at this level there is 52% o2 compared to what we’re used to at sea level!

The views along the way were too wonderful for words. You can take a million pictures, but nothing compares to the reality of it. Even there in the midst of the magnificent Himalayas it still does not look real!

Along the way we started chatting to an elder couple from Surrey, the husband was doing the trek for his 70th birthday!!! And the wife was not far off herself at 69!! So yes Mums and Dads you can definitely do it!!

When we arrived in Gorak Shep we saw some friends that we had made Adiel and Jessica. Poor Adiel was in a bad way after going to base camp, suffering with headaches etc, we advised to take the Diamox but he has some sort of weird ‘principal’ that he does not take medicine (???) silly boy!

The bad thing about coming straight to Gorak Shep is that we arrived late and all the good lodges were gone, we had to stay in the most awful of all the 4 lodges in G.S, with the most stinky toilet about 25m outside from the lodge!!!

DAY 8
EVEREST BASE CAMP / 5330m / 50%!O(MISSING)xygen / 4Km / 9 - 12pm

After moving to another lodge and charging the spare camera battery (Rp300/hr and took 2hrs = £6!!) we set off in search of Everest Base Camp!
The walk was quite hard due to the rocky path and when we got closer to base camp we were really on the glacier with little pebbles and ice flowing under in some places, so it was quite slippy to boot.

So by the time you get to base camp you’re so knackered you can barely raise a cheer! But a sit down with a slice of the most expensive apple pie in the world (£4/slice) and you feel much better!
We took lots of pictures and took lots of souvenir rocks. Then it was time to go, the weather was turning and it started to snow on the way back, which made it even harder.

The climbers tend to stick to themselves, and don’t really talk to the trekkers, which we thought was a bit weird, we thought that being stuck with the same people for months would drive you towards fresh blood of trekkers, but we’re in different classes; we’re just trekkers… they are climbers, about to summit the greatest peak in the world. It was a bit of a shame, if it was us stuck there we’d definitely want to find out what was going on in the big bad world without us!

We got back to GS around 3pm, a long day; we decided to let the world know our amazing achievement and got on the web to spread the word and download the pictures, costing a mere £22!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (The altitude must have made us go temporarily insane to even consider going on a computer that was costing 25p/min)


DAY 9
WATCH SUNRISE OVER EVEREST ON THE SUMMIT OF KALA PATTHAR
Kala Patthar / 5500m / 47%!O(MISSING)xygen / 2 hours

We left at 4am and were greeted by a glittering night sky unlike anything you will see anywhere else, you could clearly see the Milky Way and the stars were so dazzling and bright you felt like you could pick them up and put it in your pocket!
The walk was hard, very hard. No sleep + no food + no oxygen + big hill = bad times!!!

(THIS WAS THE HARDEST CLIMB THAT WE HAVE DONE… REALLY HARD WORK!!)

The sun started to peak through the mountains revealing massive beams of light coming through the summits. The sun had fully risen before we reached the top, we were totally spent and we almost gave up about 100m from the top! But we pushed on slowly and finally made it up at 6.30. Gareth collapsed and didn’t move from his little nook for half hour(I HAD NO CHOICE, CHECK THE PIC!!). Liane clambered up to the prayer flags and sat watching the sun ascend over the roof of the world.

Finally Gareth came back to life and we took our picture on the summit and put our own prayer flags up. We spent quite a bit of time up there, watching the world from an angle we will probably not see again. (or not at least for a long time!!)

After a while we set back down the massive long trail to GS. The worst thing is it is just as hard going down these steep, rocky mountains as it is going up.

On the way down the ‘hill’ we noticed a HUGE avalanche come down right over base camp, it lasted about a minute, which in avalanche terms is pretty massive, we were almost thinking that we might have to dash off to rescue, but by the time we got down to GS there was no radio contact suggesting that anyone needed help, must have just missed them. The ice collapsed right above the Khumbu ice fall where the two main climbing routes are leading from base camp.

We finally got back to the lodge around 9.30am, had some breakfast and it was time to set off back down the trail. We had been doubting whether we would go to Gokyo as it meant going over a very high, very difficult pass (the Cho La Pass) and after talking to Dambar who told us that it was a lot like the top section of Kala Patthar, where you are clambering over rocks at a 70% incline. The seed of scepticism was definitely growing.

It started to snow and hail the minute we left GS, that pretty much sealed the deal, we were not going to risk the Cho La pass in this weather, it was a sign… ‘Go back to Kathmandu, have a shower, have a steak, and have a beer…’ ok fate, we’ll listen to you!!

We stopped in Lobuche for lunch and by the time we’d finished the white winter wonderland we came from was pretty much gone.
We walked all the way to Pheriche (4200m) we did 2days walk in 1 day, about 19km, we found a place in Pheriche that even had an en-suite! We were elated!!!

DAY 10
PHERICHE to NAMCHE BAZAR / 25Km / 7.30am-3pm

Very long day, and back up and down the dreaded hills, it wasn’t as bad as we thought; your body gets more accustomed to the work and as you descend the oxygen really revives you.
It snowed again for a short while on the way to Tengboche, glad that we opted out of doing Gokyo, it would not have been pleasant in the wet and overcast conditions. Plus the views would have been pretty poor. Good call we think.

Pretty uneventful walk, apart from stopping to have our first coke in 11days and finding that it was out of date and not getting refunded our £2/can. There really is no end to the ways they screw us. Our guide just sat there and didn’t say a word, which was nice too. Well he got his way out of his tip!

DAY 11
NAMCHE BAZAR to LUKLA / 7.30am - 3pm / 25Km

Killer day, very long and hard slogging, the weather was pretty bad again, spitting for quite a while making the path muddy and slippery.
Liane had a little fall down the steps from Namche to the river and sprained her ankle a bit.

We sent Dambar forward to try to sort out the flights as it is first come first serve and we knew we would take a while. It was so much nicer without him.

We had lunch to get out of the rain and rest Liane’s ankle and Gareth’s knee, which was also playing up after all the downward parts and obviously a much longer route again. We were doing 8 days worth of trekking up in 3 days down!

Very happy to get back to Lukla and the prospect of getting back to civilisation the next day was very warming indeed.

We had dinner and rewarded ourselves with our first beer. We had a chat to Dambar about his country and politics, and were appalled to hear him say that it was ok to rip off tourists ‘as we can afford it’. Does this man not understand the industry he is working in, and that he is saying this to tourist who have been ripped off by his company…!!!???

Off very angrily to bed, and pray that the weather is good enough for flights in the early morning.

DAY 12 - BACK TO KATHMANDU

Get to the airport nice and early ready for our flight and to watch the other planes roar up the strip. The turnover of planes in unbelievably quick; unload, upload off you go!!!

Our plane was the third to arrive and the second to leave, and the first to arrive back in Kathmandu after our daunting take off! Felt like we were going on a roller-coaster as we were plummeting down the hill off the cliff, hoping we had enough lift by the end not to fall straight off!!!!

Arrive back to the bustle and noises of the city… take me back to the mountains please!

BLOGGER TIPS

First of all we would say just do the trek yourself as an independent only as long as there are two of you. There is no need to spend extra money on guides and tour companies. Yes it’s the Himalyas, yes its Everest base camp. ITS ONLY A WALK! We spent just shy of £1000 doing the trip but really could of got away with spending around half that. Just buy the flight from Kathmandu to Lukla return for about $180 and then pay for your food/lodge as you go. Easy.

DO NOT USE - GLOBAL ADVENTURE LTD TOUR AGENCY (TOTAL SCAMMERS WHO RIP PEOPLE OFF!!)

Hire a Sherpa/porter. Unless you are Jon Rambo and you have something to prove we would say get a porter. Makes the trip far more enjoyable not having to lug your gear everywhere. Plus your helping the locals. Don’t feel guilty as there is little to no work available so you will be helping them in the process. The porter/Sherpa will also act as a guide if you are still a little unsure about the route.

If were like us and had to buy new boots just be aware this is a bad idea. Try and use an old pair if you insist on wearing them. We managed all the way up to Gorak Shep just wearing Teva sandles. Bit slippery at times but easier on the knees and feet.

Buy chocolate and sweets in Kathmandu. The higher you get the pricier it gets. In some places they were charging £3-£5 for a snicker type bar!!!!

DON’T east cheese. You will regret it!!! Lots of cases of food poisoning from cheese.

Think twice about eating meat while on the trek. It tends not to be fresh or frozen. You may even see the odd dead cow walking past in some ones basket with its legs sticking out.

Take plenty of wet wipes. Showers are pricey and far too cold!

Take plenty of DIAMOX. These are not designed for AMS but they work. Everest expedition doctors say it’s a no brainer. I you are suffering from AMS just take one in the morning and then one later that day and the pain will tend to go.

Take your time. DON’T rush it. If you rush it you will not enjoying it and probably won’t make it.

Take something to read, playing cards anything. We made the mistake of thinking we would be walking all day, eat and then straight to bed. WRONG. You tend to be at your destination quite early so you have plenty of time to kill.

Check the expiry dates of products you buy before you pay for it. Once that money is gone you won't get it back even if whatever you bought is past the sell by date!

KIT YOU WILL NEED;
You will need the following

Down Jacket
Down expedition sleeping bag (which you can hire in Kathmandu)
Trainers/Sneakers/Tevas
Walking boots (the ones sold in Kathmandu are naff so try and bring your own!)
2x Walking poles
3x t-shirt
Warm top or fleece (maybe take two if you feel the cold)
2x trousers
Thermal trousers (only need for sleeping)
Gortex trousers
Waterproof top or poncho
Head torch
2x water bottles (use sigg)
Rucksack
First aid kit
Water purifying pills or drops (or use iodine)
Entertainment (ipod, cards, book or two) THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT AS THERE IS LOADS OF TIME TO KILL!!
Diamox pills - see a doctor for these
Snack bars / Energy bars

Apart from that a lot of stamina and a bit of luck!!!

LITTLE CONCLUSION
Was it worth it??? YES
Its a hard old trek but the views are worth the hard work and fact that we can now say we have been to the base camp is cool. Some people we met said they having been training for a while. This is rubish. YOU DO NOT NEED TO TRAIN FOR THIS. All you need to determination and you will make it. Just don't push yourself to hard at anyone time otherwise you WILL FAIL!! Trust us on this as plenty of people were taken back down.

So, good luck and try and the apple pie!!!!

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