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We're now back from our trip to Everest, 27 days after leaving!
While there we wrote a journal entry every day, and if you're short of sleeping pills, well there's going to be plenty here. So here is what we wrote:
Day 1 - Kathmandu to Jiri We boarded the express bus at 8am, 7 hours is all it takes. Nine and a half hours later, and the bus rolls into the small town of Jiri. On the way we saw another bus that had fallen from the road down a steep hill and got a little roughed up.
Everybody somehow survived the crash and so we moved on, our driver simply shrugging and returning to overtaking anything that was in the way on any blind bend he could.
We found a lodge, or more truthfully, it found us, the owner getting on the bus and talking us into submission until we agreed to stay there.
It turned out to be a nice place, though the electric was cut off at 7pm, and so we simply went to bed!
Day 2 - Jiri to Shivalaya Today was our first day of walking, in
the end it was quite disappointing as we walked up 500m in altitude and then down 600m on the other side!
We managed to walk along a road for the first half and then turned onto some dirt paths. We met up with two Kiwi brothers who were constantly bickering, but they gave us some entertainment for the second half of our walk.
When we got to Shivalaya we chose a lodge, and it turned out to be nothing but a mistake! The shower had a window overlooking the garden, or was it that the garden had a window overlooking the shower? We ordered Dal Baht for dinner ( a local dish consisting of rice, a potato curry and a soup (the Baht)). Unfortunately Rhian's Baht had some extras in it, namely a whole cockroach.
Tomorrow we'll attempt to get to Kenja, which is a 5 hour walk away.
Day 3 - Shivalaya to Bhandar A really steep climb for the first two hours before we came to a small village and stopped for breakfast. The worst omelets in the world made us feel dirty and the fact that our breakfasts costs less than 75p
each including drinks didn't make it any better.
The path wasn't quite as steep afterwards but it was another 3 hours until we reached Duarelia. We stopped here for lunch before the thunder started. It was only an hour downhill to Bhandar so we decided we'd go for it. The rain caught up with us ten minutes later but eventually we got to Bhandar, despite it being really slippery and the Mama of the house invited us in where we ate potatoes and hot chillis with her daughter and daughter in law.
The son apparently is walking somewhere but all the women found it funny when they told us this. What happened to him we may never know, but we enjoyed the hospitality none the less.
Day 4 - Bhandar - Kinja Today was a nice short walking day, tomorrow wont be. We left before 8am and the sun was shining. For the first hour or so we were staying at a fairly constant altitude, around 2100m. But after that it dropped considerably. Whilst going downhill is easy compared to uphill, it brings with it some different problems. The constant pressure on the knees is causing
some pain, and my left foot is starting to stiffen up whenever we rest.
Regardless, we arrived in the one street village of Kinja after three hours and at 1,670metres we're actually 300m lower than we started.
The village is set at the apex of two rivers and you pass over a rope bridge to get into it. It's a pleasant village set amongst lush green valleys. Once we'd registered with the police we were allowed in. They didn't check any ID, so we may as well have told them we were two vagrants from Tajikistan.
We did some laundry which seemed to create an audience as the locals were somewhat amused with a male washing his own pants. Gender roles are certainly more defined than at home. Tomorrow we have to climb 1,600metres. Or a mile into the sky.
Day 5 - Kinja to Goyem Starting out at 6.30 we knew we had a long day ahead of us. We'd already gone to the start of the trail last night to see what was ahead of us. It looked steep!
So we headed up the track and into the forest and found that
we'd climbed 200m in the first half hour. The climb continued at this gradient until we'd been going for two hours, our legs started to tire and there was no sign of a village anywhere.
The little red arrows that had been helping us in the first few days had also disappeared, and just as we thought we'd got lost, we bumped into Gert.
Gert is a sixty something Dutch guy that we'd passed a number of times in the last few days and he was also on our bus to Jiri. We stopped and had a cup of tea with him, I looked after a Tibetan baby while the owner got our change and we carried on.
There was no downhill on our climb today, we walked a distance of five miles, in total, but up by another mile, so over the whole day we were climbing a gradient of 20%. And that's an average!
After lunch we had an hour to Goyem, through some thick forest and we finally mad it at about 3pm. The cloud was starting to gather around the village and by 5pm it was so thick that we couldn't see for more than 20 feet.
Gert showed up a little while later and we chatted for a while and found out he was a retired carpet salesman working out of Iran and has been living in developing countries since his retirement. Having never been married, it turns out that Gert is something of a ladies man, though he admitted that the altitude plays havoc with his erections and he had to descend once (down the mountain) so that he could keep up with the demands of a particularly energetic Spanish lady. The evening went on with Gert telling us more and ore about himself. He's certainly n interesting man, and his testosterone levels have certainly not decreased with age. We went to bed and I double checked that I'd locked the door.
As we went to bed, it was obvious that there was going to be a storm and we were still inside the clouds, we have a climb tomorrow but then it'll be all downhill, but if this could stays then we might not be able to move as we're going over a pass before the descent.
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