Everest Base Camp

Hi, Well – we did it… slightly quicker than we anticipated, we’d left 17 days for it just in case we needed extra days to acclimatize but the reality is that getting up and down quickly is best – hanging around just makes you feel bad.

So we left on 24^th Aug from Kathamandu – our guide called Bhum, a Tamanz from the district of Bhoipur picked us up from the hotel at 5:30 for our flight to Lukla. The flight was delayed due to bad weather which lifted after about an hour – the flight itself is just 35 mins and you are literally flying through the valleys, no higher than the mountains – it’s a beautiful flight and an amazing landing experience at Lukla.

Lukla airport is perched on the side of a mountain 2850 metres high. The runway is just 500 metres long and 20 metres wide – it has an incline of 12% - handy, as it gives the plane that extra bit of braking that it needs to stop.

We met Pansanz our Porter at Lukla – he’s a real-life Sherpa who lives in Lukla during the trekking season and farms outside of it.

Getting off the plane and waking the 5 minutes to the nearest lodge for breakfast we immediately noticed the difference that altitude makes – even here at just 2850 metres there is only 70% of the oxygen in the air compared to that at sea level.

We did suffer from altitude sickness – Phil started on the first day, but recovered by the following morning – it came back after Namche (3500 metres) and never really went away – it comes and goes and as we learned, resting on your rest day only makes it worse – it’s best to keep active and busy.

The whole two weeks has given us memories that we’ll never forget – it’s a truly brilliant experience – the whole range of emotions, feeling fantastic, feeling terrible – eating like a horse and not able to stomach a thing – beautiful landscape and scenery on a scale that you just cannot express and that photographs cannot do justice too.

The days are simple - we generally woke at 6, ate and were out trekking by 7. On the way up we walked for between 6-7 hours each day and on the way down maybe an hour each day more – but it only took us 3 days to get back compared to the 9 days it took to get there.

Along the way you meet many fascinating people – happy to chat and share their experiences and happy to tell you of their horror stories of taking members of their group down in the middle of the night when they were throwing up and hallucinating – yes, really – it does happen – more often than you’d think.

At night dinner in the lodges is a friendly time – everyone sits around and discusses their day and we took the time to get to know our guide and porter – we taught them card games and English and in return learned a couple of words of Nepali (Jam jam – let’s get going, Bistari – slowly and Timi Racka – pick ‘em up… not sure if these are spelled right but you get the idea) – in return they told us about their lives, families and how they make ends meet. Bed time comes when it gets dark… about 6:30.

For us the weather was simply as good as it gets – we were as lucky as you could be – we walked each day up to as high as 4300 metres in our shorts and T-shirts, it gets cold at night but during the day it was hot, clear skies and brilliant sunshine and because we were just after the monsoon season the whole area was lush and green - After 4000 metres things change – the trees disappear, it’s more rocky – much colder at night. Breathing becomes laboured at rest and the colder very dry air gives you the Khumbhu cough. Our appetites disappeared, in fact from 4300 metres upwards (4 days) we drank nothing but warm water and ate nothing but garlic soup, made Charlie friendly which meant it was just warm garlic water in reality.

Getting to Base Camp was a tough day, and when we got there it wasn’t the base camp that we had pictured in our minds or seen in the books that we’d read – it turns out that the sign we had our photo taken at is in fact Old base camp – new base camp being a further 30 minutes up the glacier – we had to go there of course! So we did and saw the Indian Everest Expedition team making their preparations for their 3^rd climb to camp 3 – getting to base camp was enough for us though and to see an actual expedition was superb.

The following morning after a sleepless night at Gorak Shep (5170 metres) we got up at 3:30, head torches on and started to climb Kala Pattar (5554 metres) for the morning views of Everest and the surrounding mountain ranges – it was cold, so cold our camel backs froze and Phil’s buff froze to his lips.

After breakfast (half a toblerone and warm water) we started our descent and managed to drop a vertical mile in one day – we still had no appetite but the sickness and headaches went – and in the next two days we had got all the way back to Lukla. Brilliant!

 

For those of you that aren’t yet bored here’s our daily plan:

 

Day 1: – Kathmandu – Lukla – Pakding (2650 metres)

After the flight, our first day was easy – just a 2 and a half hours trek to Pakding, a small village 200 metres lower than Lukla.

 

Day 2: Pakding – Namche (3450 metres)

What a glorious day – shorts and a T-shirt all the way. The morning was a gentle trek for 3 hours following the Dudh Kosi river through villages to a place called Jorsale where we stopped for lunch – veg fried rice – the locals really know how to cook and both of us were enjoying sampling it.

After Jorsale we entered the National Park, registered with the authorities and started the long climb to Namche – at 3450 metres we were climbing about 800 metres in vertical height today – most, if not all was during the afternoon. We were staying 2 nights in Namche in order to give our body’s time to adjust to the altitude.

Although a long hard day the trek to Namche is very spectacular, the scenery is superb and you get to walk over long suspension bridges spanning huge valleys – Namche is also a large town with a Saturday market, so lots of porters carrying loads to trade – these people are amazing – some carry up to 120Kgs on their backs and get paid just a couple of dollars a day – we could see now that our porter was loving life with a fully adjustable rucksack weighing in at less than 20Kgs.

 

Day 3: Namche

Our third day was a rest day in order for us to acclimatize – but we didn’t really rest. Bhim took us to the Everest view hotel – a further 400 metres higher so that we could get our first view of Everest and to make sure that we got there before any cloud appeared we were up at 6am – on our rest day! The views were brilliant though and the climb in altitude was supposed to help us.

By night time both of us were feeling sick and had headaches – we went to bed knowing that tomorrow we had another 300 metres of vertical height to climb and that we were getting up at 6 again. It was also getting harder to sleep and we kept waking up short of breath and kept having very vivid dreams.

 

 

Day 4: Namche – Deboche (3760 metres)

So – another early start and another glorious day – we got the best of the weather for the whole trek. The morning was an easy 3 hours with no real gain in height and we had recovered again over night, the trek just following the paths around the mountains, coming across the occasional Stupa (Buddhist temples) – all morning we had the view of Everest.

We stopped for lunch at Phunki Tenga (probably to the best named village in the Khumbhu region) and ate our own body weights in fried potatoes with cheese and egg – at the time this made us feel fantastic, we were sat in the sun by the river and feeling good – we knew we had another climb, but hadn’t given it the respect that we should have.

After lunch we had a very painful 2 and a half hour hike to Tengboche, climbing up to 3860 metres only to get to the top and then to descend 100 metres to Deboche – our rest place for the night and we were starting to feel the cold after the sun had gone in.

 

Day 5: Deboche – Dingboche (4350)

The was the day that saw most change – it got very cold at night – it even snowed, the scenary changed at around 4000 metres as we climbed above the tree line, we lost our appetites and caught the Khumbu cough (the air is so dry and cold that your throat reacts in the same way as it would if you had an infection)

So – for this part of the trek we were following the Imja Khola river all the way to Dingboche to the height of 4350 metres – we’d scheduled another rest day so were at Dingboche for 2 nights.

Because we were now above the tree line the whole scenery had changed, it was much more baron and the paths were starting to get more rutted with bigger rocks and boulders to negotiate – in fact everything was just getting bigger, the sheer size of the mountains is incredible, and although less lush the scenery just continues to amaze.

 

In interesting aside…. Because there is no wood to burn, the locals dry Yak dung to burn to keep them warm.

 

Day 6: Dingboche

We made a mistake here and actually rested – we weren’t feeling brilliant so stayed late in bed and hung around the tea-house for most of the day – we just took a small walk in the afternoon through the village.

By the evening we were both feeling very ill, to the point where we actually packed our kit just in case we had to descend during the night – headaches, feeling extremely sick and vivid hallucinations in the dark made for a very unpleasant night of sleeplessness.

This combined with the need to stay in close proximity to the toilet - which for some reason the only other group staying invented a new way of using it which involved standing on the seat and squatting so as to cover the thing in filth – made the whole experience even more challenging.

 

Day 7: Dingboche – Lobuche (4940 metres)

We thought that we had agreed to stay for a third night in Dingboche in order to acclimatize, but this was clearly not in our guide’s agenda – and to be fair had we have stayed another night I don’t think we’d have made it to Everest.

We were feeling terrible, we couldn’t eat, we had coughs and our lips had started to crack – the day ahead saw another climb of 600 metres to a height of 4940 metres - it was now also cold in the day time. Even so – we managed the days hike in 3 and a half hours without break to arrive in Lobuche before midday.

It’s cold here – and by now all we could drink and eat was hot water and garlic soup.

We made sure we went for a walk during the afternoon and climbed a ridge to look at the Khumbhu Glacier – the glacier had retreated from its full extent in 1996 and to see the path that it had gorged out of the rock and ground was incredible – up on the top of the ridge were also a large number of memorials for lost Sherpa’s – quite surprising to see just how many people have been lost in this area.

After a lovely dinner of more hot water and garlic soup we headed for bed – tomorrow was Gorak Shep and Everest Base camp.

 

Day 8: Lobuche – Gorak Shep (5170 metres) – Everest Base Camp (5364 metres)

We’d agreed to spend only one night at Gorak Shep because it’s so high – at 5170 metres, breathing at rest is difficult. So because we wanted to climb Kala Pattar (5554 metres) and get the best views we had to go early in the morning – which meant trekking to Gorak Shep, eating (garlic soup and water) and then trekking to Everest base camp, back to Gorak Shep for sleep – then up at 3:30am to climb Kala Pattar before our descent.

 

Day 9: Gorak Shep – Kala Pattar (5554 metres) – Pangboche (4000 metres)

It took us 3 and a half days from here to get to base Camp – we descended after breakfast in 8 hours and dropped a vertical mile – starting to feel better again. Stopped at Thukla for tea and Pheriche for lunch.

 

Day 10: Pangboche – Namche (3450 metres)

A long day, but worth the distance – we were now just one more day from Lukla and starting to sleep normally.

We stopped at Phunki Tengi for tea and Lawishasa for Lunch

 

Day 11: Namche – Lukla (2850 metres)

Another long long day but there was no way we could have put the boots on for another day – stopped at Pakding for lunch

Lukla

Farewell and thank you dinner with Pasanz and Bhim

 

Day 12: Lukla – Kathmandu

Bed- out to get drunk!