Kathmandu, Everest Base Camp

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Arrived in Kathmandu April 6 feeling a good mixture of terror, anxiety and regret. the only cure for this was a beer and big bowl of lentils. worked a charm.

Spent about three full days in Kathmandu before meeting up wit the intrepid group to start trekking. took these first few days pretty easy did a bit of sight seeing, lots of reading and generally just chilled out, which in hindsight was a very good decision. trekking to Base cap is no walk in the park!

On Saturday met up with my fellow trekkers, and could not have asked for a better group. We had Steve, Kelly and Hayley (preggers, what a trooper) all from country Victoria, Peter and Sue from Sydney, Canberra honeymooners Renee and Simon, Martin the marathon man, Bek my roomie and top girl, Olly the token pom and Marcel, 67 years old from Switzerland, fittest by a country mile.

First day we flew into Lukla, single most terrifying flight of my life. We were in a 16 seater tin box, with the controls literally held together with tape and string. Just to make matters more precarious, the runway at Lukla still waited, all 150m of it facing straight into a cliff face. Jut had to sit back and hope like hell the brakes wouldn't fail us at the last minute. (to get a better idea of how things looked, you tube 'Lukla airport'). Everything of course went fine and we arrived in Lukla just fine. Had a short three hour trek that day, mostly down hill to reach our first stop at Phukding.

Day two was one of the toughest walking days of the trek, we gained around 800m of altitude that day over 7 hours, which may not seem so bad however the first 5 hours was solid 'Nepali flat' meaning a little bit up then a little bit down, over and over, finishing the day with a solid one to two hour climb into Namchee Bazzar.

We had a rest day in Namchee and took a short walk up to the Sherpa museum, quite interesting and also gave first views of Everest for the trek. Everest is however a very disappointing looking mountain, always the 'short one in the middle'.

Days four, five and six we climbed solid distances to reach Labouche by the 16th. The climb into Labouche did involve one very nasty hill that takes you from 4400 m to about 4700m in around 40 minutes. A lot of people struggle with altitude at this point and unfortunately we lost one in our group after this climb. We spent one night in LAbouche at 4900m and i was feeling the affects of altitude sickness by this point. I manly struggled with the altitude at night, in Labouche i found sleep nearly impossible to come by and when you do doze of your mind stays active, dreaming consciously is the only way i can think to describe it. all in all not very restful.

Day 7, My birthday and Base camp day! We walked for 9 hours this day and bloody hell it was hard going. the air is so thin by this point you literally walk 20m on flat ground and feel like you just did a 100m sprint. the body just can't get enough oxygen and the only way to deal with it is to walk very slowly. We made our way from Labouche up to Gorak Shep at 5180 m. stopped for lunch here before continuing on to Base Camp a further 3 hours walk there and back to Gorak Shep. Base Camp sits at around 5350 m and lies next to a glacier, the walk along here though hard presents a landscape like you will never see. it is entirely desolate, nothing can survive over around 4000m or so, so it is literally rock and ice. you feel like your walking on the moon or something. The feeling at Base Camp made it all worth it though! you forget your pounding headache and aching body and no one can wipe the smile from their faces. I found a box of matches on the ground at Base camp and we all proceeded to give me a snickers bar cake and sing happy birthday, quite a laugh even if the cake was a total failure. Spent all in all around Half an hour at base camp before walking back to spend the night at Gorak Shep. Birthday night was memorable, in bed by 7:30, rager! the guides did make me a cake though, chocolate and delicious, and the whole tea house sang happy birthday.

It was after base camp that i had the worst altitude sickness, all the weird dream stuff from the night before happened, plus a serious fever! the temperature would have been well below 0 in our rooms that night but i slept in barely anything, was soo hot! The next morning included an optional 5 am climb to Kala Patthar for sunrise, it's the highest point on the trek and boasts the best views of Everest. about half of us fronted up at 5 am but only four made it all the way to the top. I only made it half way as i started getting really nauseous on the way up which would have been from a combination of altitude sickness and exhaustion from two sleepless nights. was pretty bummed to have to go back down, but didn't want to push it too much. will have to do it next time instead!

Headed down 1000m on this day too, walked a different route through a gorgeous valley and got caught in a little snowstorm, never seen it snow like that before. was really beautiful!

Made it back to Kathmandu yesterday morning, rest of the group have started heading back home now so I'll be heading to Pokhara on a bus tomorrow morning.

Hope you're all well back home, update again soon!
xxx

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Comments

[Mum]

Love your work Charlie - great read! Can't quite picture you with dreads but hey, stranger things have happened.