himalaya trek

In Uncategorized on 5 June 2009 with 1 comment

(pho­tos are still to come)

the single greatest and most dif­fi­cult adven­ture of my (so far) life began with a simple email, sent to me by a friend who i’d met in korea. the friend was now liv­ing in thai­l­and with his girl­friend and planned to trek up to everest base camp … ryan and boom had decided to elope and have an uncon­ven­tional wed­ding in the himalayas.

i was trav­el­ing through burma at the time and i was very keen to join them on their trip. in return for pho­to­graph­ing their wed­ding, ryan offered to help me cover some of the costs. i left burma a few days earlier than i’d ori­gin­ally planned, flew back to thai­l­and and made plans to meet up with ryan and boom before we left for nepal.

hon­estly, i was both excited and appre­hens­ive. my travels had been fun and i’d enjoyed my 60 days on the road immensely. however, i am not the most ath­letic per­son. nor am i the most will­ing of trek­kers. i have a tend­ency to be lazy and didn’t know if i could handle 18 days of trekking through the himalayas.

our trekking plan was fairly simple. there are two pop­u­lar trek routes in the khumbu region. the west­ern route starts at luckla and goes through to gokyo. from there we can cross chola pass (prob­ably the most dif­fi­cult part of the trek, cross­ing ice and gla­ciers) to reach the east­ern route. the east­ern route goes all the way up to gorak shep and everest base camp.

after reach­ing base camp we planned to return down the east­ern route, back to luckla.

may 6th (day 1) — i packed and checked out of my hotel room in khao san road, bangkok. i’d pre­b­ooked a ride to the air­port and headed out­side to meet the minibus. 40 minutes later i was at the air­port wait­ing for ryan and boom. they went to the wrong counter, so i waited nearly an hour for them to show up. so, once they arrived, we checked in, looked around the duty free shops, ate, and headed to our depar­ture gate.

oh, i got a nice sur­prise dur­ing check in … i stood on the bag­gage scales and weighed myself. hav­ing traveled for 60 days so far, i was pleased to learn that my weight was 78.9kg. dur­ing my last months teach­ing in korea, my weight had been around 84kg. i’d dropped about 5kg and, with an upcom­ing hike through the him­alayas, i was hop­ing to drop more weight.

at the gate, they did the secur­ity check and boom was told that she couldn’t take some of her cos­met­ics, due to the liquid restric­tions. she dropped an expens­ive mois­tur­iser in the bin and walked through the secur­ity clear­ance. on the other side boom real­ised that she could prob­ably put the mois­tur­iser into a dif­fer­ent con­tainer and keep it with her. she went back through the secur­ity clear­ance to retrieve the con­tainer out of the trash. how­ever, it was miss­ing. one of the secur­ity staff, real­ising that the cos­met­ics were expens­ive, pock­eted it. know­ing they’d been caught, the mois­tur­iser reappeared mira­cu­lously and boom was able to switch it to another container.

while this was hap­pen­ing i was mak­ing loud com­ments to the staff about cor­rup­tion and dis­hon­esty. i sus­pec­ted that the girl who was watch­ing boom switch con­tain­ers was the girl who pock­eted the cos­met­ics in the first place. i made it very clear this wasn’t accept­able. boom told me that the girl prob­ably spoke eng­lish and i respon­ded that i know she speaks eng­lish and my anger was dir­ec­ted at her. with that little debarcle behind us, we headed to the gate and waited to board the plane … all the while dis­cuss­ing the bull­shit that had just happened.

the flight to nepal was one of the worst i’ve ever had. thai air was good, but as we approached kath­mandu the tur­bu­lence was quite strong and the land­ing was hard. the pilot got on the speaker and apo­lo­gised for the rough land­ing, which was caused by strong cross­winds on the run­way. we cleared cus­toms and immig­ra­tion and went out to meet our guides.

the guides were wait­ing (our flight was late) and were happy to see us. the two men, viray and kathka had organ­ised the entire trip for us. kathka was also com­ing with us and would guide us for the entire trek up to everest base camp and back.

we crammed into a taxi, headed to our hotel, and checked in. we did a little shop­ping, buy­ing some needed hik­ing gear, and i bought a book about nepal’s kumaris for read­ing dur­ing the trek.

may 7 (day 2) — i had a big buf­fet break­fast at the hotel and went out to do more shop­ping. rather than buy­ing a sleep­ing bag and heavy parker, we were able to rent them for 50 cents a day each. bar­gain. i also bought some cas­ual shoes, socks, thermal under­wear, a water bottle, a heavy fleece jacket, two pairs of pants, chlor­ine water puri­fy­ing tab­lets and a small backpack.

i was happy with my pur­chases, so i headed back to the hotel, checked email, enjoyed a carls­berg beer, and had a break. later the three of us went to a temple and spent the late after­noon tak­ing pho­to­graphs. then we found a korean res­taur­ant and had din­ner there … actu­ally, we were look­ing for a dif­fer­ent korean res­taur­ant that we’d seen while shop­ping. how­ever, we couldn’t find that res­taur­ant again and ended up at another place. it turns out that we’d made a good choice. we were the only cus­tom­ers but the food was fant­astic. my kimchi-jiggae was awesome!

we went back to the hotel after that, with the inten­tion of hav­ing an early night … since the next day, we’d get a very early start and have a long day.

may 8 (day 3) — today was the buddha’s birth­day. my sleep was inter­rup­ted by some arse­hole yelling at a taxi driver at 3am. in the nar­row street out­side our hotel, the sound echoed off the build­ings and straight into my room. i went out on the bal­cony and told the guy to shut up. he was angry at me too, for inter­rupt­ing him, but he reluct­antly lowered his voice.

an hour and a half later we were in a taxi to the air­port. we flew from kath­mandu to luckla (2850m) in a 20 seat plane called an otter. it’s a twin pro­peller plane and is the smal­lest i’ve ever flown in. the flight was good and very scenic, passing between moun­tains along the way. coin­cid­ent­ally, there was a large group of 18 korean men on our plane. most of them were han­di­capped (one was a mid­get, another was para­ple­gic) and they were mak­ing a doc­u­ment­ary of their trek. kbs had sent a couple of cam­era­men along too. we chat­ted with them a bit dur­ing the flight.

the best part of the flight was the land­ing. the town of luckla is on the side of a moun­tain. the land­ing strip is less than 200 meters long, off a cliff face and up hill. the planes fly straight at the air­strip and use the uphill run to slow the plane down into the land­ing bays. it’s quite unnerv­ing how fast the planes come in and how quickly they stop, but the land­ing was very cool.

we got out of the plane, col­lec­ted our gear, and left the air­port. just out­side we met the two port­ers who would be join­ing us for the trek — mahandra and jandra. the port­ers’ jobs were to basic­ally cart our gear up and down the trek route. while it may sound ter­rible, the entire everest/himalaya trekking ven­ture is a big money earner for north­ern nepal. so for them, it’s a good way to make a liv­ing. the people who work along the paths between luckla and everest base camp often earn more money than people in kath­mandu. so, at the air­port, there’s a very large crowd of port­ers look­ing for work. those who aren’t hired to carry gear for for­eign­ers often end up car­ry­ing sup­plies to the lodges along the routes anyway.

our port­ers were young, but seemed like nice guys. our group of six (ryan, boom, me, kathka the guide and our two porters) was assembled and ready to go. we took a break in luckla to have some tea and organ­ise our gear. dur­ing the break i real­ised that i was short on gear, par­tic­u­larly an all weather jacket and light fleece. i bought some in town and was happy for the entire trip that i’d been smart enough to pick up the extra items … they’re the clothes i wore most dur­ing the trek.

so, the trek began in earn­est. we walked down­hill most of the way to a small vil­lage called phak­ding (2640m). we arrived after lunch. it took a couple of hours and we were all tired. it was the first day, and we were ascend­ing. later that after­noon ryan felt sick. acute moun­tain sick­ness occurs at heights above 1800 meters and is caused by a lack of oxy­gen being car­ried through the blood­stream into the body. ryan had a head­ache and was naus­eous, two clas­sic symp­toms. he ate a little bit of food and went to sleep. i was quite wor­ried that although we were only at 2640 meters, ams might cause prob­lems dur­ing the trip. the import­ant thing to remem­ber is that ams is not affected by fit­ness levels or age. it’s 100% genet­ics. ryan and boom are both more fit, stronger and younger than me. so for ryan to get sick on the first day was very stressful.

we all had an early night.

may 9 (day 4) — in the morn­ing ryan felt fine. he’d man­aged to shake the sick­ness and we made an early start for our next estin­a­tion: namche bazaar (3450m).

i have to admit that it was prob­ably the hard­est day of my life. we walked, mostly uphill, for about six hours. we crossed the river four times, each time via sus­pen­sion bridge. we passed through a small vil­lage called jorselle. the hik­ing was tough, it wsa windy and a little rainy. we stopped often, mostly due to lack of breath and exhaus­tion, and finally arrived at our hotel at the top of namche bazaar. namche is big and built in the curve of a moun­tain. as a res­ult, the bot­tom of town is quite far away from the top, which fol­lows the con­tours of the moun­tain. we arrived in namche bazaar, there was a tour­ist check­point (for safety pur­poses) and we stopped for some tea. after that, it took over 40 minutes just to walk through town, up to our hotel. we arrived com­pletely exhausted.

when we arrived in namche i’d star­ted to feel a head­ache com­ing on. i slept through the head­ache in the after­noon and still had it at din­ner time. i watched a little bit of foot­ball on tv and went to bed, hop­ing to kick the head­ache which i knew was the first sign of ams.

may 10 (day 5) — today was a rest day in namche bazaar. the pur­pose was to help ourselves accli­mat­ise to the alti­tude, due to our fast ascent. after break­fast we headed out for a day hike. the hike, to a higher alti­tude and back down, helps with adjust­ing to the alti­tude. our des­tin­a­tion for the day was thamo (3493m), across the ridges and moun­tains not far from namche bazaar.

along the way we stopped on a par­tic­u­lar ridge that had numer­ous rocks at the top. the rocks were good for climb­ing, so ryan and boom took turns climb­ing while i pho­to­graphed them. after a while, we con­tin­ued the walk to thamo where whe had lunch. in the after­noon we returned to namche. in the even­ing we played chess and scrabble before get­ting another early night.

may 11 (day 6) — our days had began to develop a routine, wake early, eat at 6.30 and ready to go by 7am. at 7.30 we took a group photo and star­ted the steep, dif­fi­cult climb out of namche bazaar, over the hill towards khumjung (3790m). we stopped for a break at the top of the hill and while we were drink­ing tea, it began to snow. we walked through the heavy snow, mostly down­hill, into khumjung.

we spent the after­noon relax­ing in our lodge. the weather was freez­ing cold out­side and we settled in around the fire. we watched part of a doc­u­ment­ary about mt everest, played some chess and called it a night.

may 12 (day 7) — today was another tough day. we left khumjung early. it had been snow­ing all night and con­tin­ued snow­ing after we left. the track star­ted down hill, and after a tea break in mum­danda, we had a long tough hike up hill to dole (4040m). the hike took nearly four hours and it snowed pretty much the whole way.

when we arrived in dole we were cold and tired. it was another early night for me, head­ing to bed imme­di­ately after din­ner. i still had the head­ache that i’d been try­ing to kick, but the alti­tude (along with the exhaust­ing hikes each day) was mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for me to recover.

may 13 (day 8 ) — today’s hike was rel­at­ively easy. we made the walk to maschermo (4410m) and arrived before lunch. mach­ermo is an import­ant town along the west­ern route because it’s the only place with a med­ical clinic. at 3pm we went to the clinic for their daily acute moun­tain sick­ness lec­ture. about eight for­eign­ers were present for the inform­a­tion ses­sion, after which we had the chance to have our blood oxy­gen levels tested. my blood oxy­gen was at 83%, which is com­mon for first time climbers. it also explained the con­stant head­ache. i had a chat with the doc­tors and they were nice enough to give me six free diamox tab­lets. diamox is a very use­ful drug for pre­vent­ing ams. the drug’s func­tion is to help your body increase blood oxy­gen levels by assist­ing the kid­neys to get rid of all unwanted mater­i­als in the blood stream — free­ing up space for red blood cells, which can carry more oxygen.

after the lec­ture we returned to the lodge. i met a brit­ish guy called richard (who we would bump into quite a few times dur­ing our trek). after din­ner i took my first diamox tab­let and went to bed.

may 14 (day 9) — today was my birth­day. i woke up with a head­ache, which was a shitty start to my birth­day. we star­ted late and walked all the way through to gokyo (4790m). it was another long, dif­fi­cult walk and we were all tired by the end of it.

how­ever, the walk to gokyo proved to be one of the nicest places in the khumbu region. before arriv­ing at gokyo we passed two beau­ti­ful moun­tain lakes. the small vil­lage of gokyo was also on a lake and at the base of gokyo-ri, a hill 500 meters above the village.

des­pite how nice gokyo was, i was in a shit mood from the long walk and the head­ache. actu­ally, i was still wor­ried about my head­aches because it was the first symp­tom of ams. dur­ing the preious days, had any other symp­toms presen­ted them­selves, i may have been forced to retreat down the moun­tain to recover. ams does kill people and the symp­toms must be taken seriously.

i went for a sleep and woke up feel­ing much, much bet­ter. we met in the din­ing room for din­ner and i was sur­prised to see that our guides had pre­pared a chocol­ate cake for my birth­day. every­one (includ­ing the other tour­ists in the lodge) sang happy birth­day and we shared the cake. it was a lot of fun and put me in much bet­ter spirits.

may 15 (day 10) — today was our second rest and acli­mat­isa­tion day. today was also the day that ryan and boom decided to hold their wed­ding ceremony.

after the two days of snow, we’d had two days of very good weather. ini­tially, ryan and boom had wanted to climb gokyo-ri and have their cere­mony at the top. how­ever, boom really liked the lakes that we had passed, so they decided to walk back to the second lake and have the cere­mony on the shoreline.

we spent an hour or two at the lake tak­ing wed­ding pho­tos. ryan and boom bought a bottle of bollinger cham­paigne at the air­port in bangkok and had car­ried the bottle all the way up to gokyo. while they were get­ting changed (ryan brought a suit and boom had a short wed­ding dress) i took pho­tos of the bottle and wed­ding rings sit­ting in the snow that was still cov­er­ing the ground. after that, i took lots of pho­tos of ryan and boom together. they gave each other the rings and the sym­bol­ism of their cere­mony was fin­ished. we took a few more pho­tos and i gave my olym­pus to jandra so that he could take pho­tos as well.

over­all, it turned out to be a really nice cere­mony and the pho­tos were great. their decision to have the cere­mony by the lake paid off, since we never quite had such beau­ti­ful weather (or sur­round­ings) any­where else dur­ing our trip … even though boom froze her arse off in her wed­ding dress.

we walked back to the lodge and boom was very excited. she kept show­ing people her wed­ding pho­tos. we talked with the other trav­el­ers and talked to khatka about our travel sched­ule. due to the snow, it was anti­cip­ated that we wouldn’t be able to take chola pass — the track over gla­ciers that con­nects the top of the west­ern and east­ern routes. being a dif­fi­cult pass,

the snow had meant that the pass was closed to cas­ual trek­kers. we talked about our options and real­ised that the only way to get to gorak shep and everest base camp was to return down the west­ern route and cross at phortse. it meant back­track­ing down the hill and head­ing up the east­ern route. it also meant more time and more hiking.

while think­ing about our options, i’d come up with an idea. gokyo-ri was on the next day’s agenda. ryan and boom were still keen to get to the top. gokyo-ri offers the first chance to actu­ally seen the peak of mt everest. per­son­ally, i wasn’t actu­ally that interest in the climb — partly because it was a tough 500 meter ver­tical climb, partly because i’d be happy to wait until we got closer to base camp to see everest. so, the next morn­ing i would pack and start the trek down to phortse with one of the port­ers. ryan, boom, khatka and the other porter would stay, climb gokyo-ri, and begin their trek later in the day.

there was another bene­fit of leav­ing early — i could get a head start and travel at my own speed. ryan and boom could prob­ably travel more quickly and it’s likely that they’d catch me up. i’d have half a day’s head start and we expec­ted to meet again in two or three day’s time.

every­one agreed to the plan, we played some more scrabble and chess, and headed to bed.

may 16 (day 11) — the rest day yes­ter­day had been good for me. coupled with the diamox and the know­ledge that i was head­ing down­hill (lower alti­tudes) put me in a great mood. i was also kind of look­ing for­ward to trekking on my own for a couple of days. of course, i would be trav­el­ing with one of the port­ers, but it felt nice to break up the routine and do some­thing a little different.

after break­fast i said farewell to ryan and boom. jandra and i got star­ted back down the moun­tain while the oth­ers headed uphill to climb gokyo-ri. jandra and i made good time. we had lunch in thare (4300m) and reached phortse (3800m) by 2pm. we’d des­cen­ded 1000 meters in a day. i was tired, but my head­ache was gone and i felt much better.

the lodge we stayed in was a nice place, how­ever the owner was a com­plete arse­hole. i asked him for a dis­count on the room and he laughed at me. he asked if i was from israel and that he was going to write a diary about how funny i was. he was quite rude to me and i hated being at the hotel. i was the only trav­eler in the lodge and aside from din­ner, i stayed in my room. i took the chess set with me and i’d star­ted teach­ing jandra the finer points of chess. he’d already played a few games in gokyo, and under­stood how the pieces moved, but still lacked any foresight or strategy. we worked on that until about 9pm when the owner told me i had to go back to my room so that he could shut down the din­ing room because he wanted to go to bed.

may 17 (day 12) — after break­fast i was glad to leave the hotel. the owner was such a prick. we packed and left early. it had rained all night and the trail was wet. i thought it was going to rain dur­ing the morn­ing too, but the rain stopped while i was eat­ing break­fast and we man­aged to get away while it was dry.

phys­ic­ally, how­ever, i wasn’t feel­ing the greatest. dur­ing lunch and din­ner the pre­vi­ous day i couldn’t fin­ish my meals. i had soup for break­fast and fin­ished it, so i was hop­ing that i’d fare a little bet­ter with solids today.

after a long trek, i arrived in per­ishe (4243m) feel­ing tired but feel­ing good. i didn’t feel any fatigue either. i had a short sleep and i awoke to real­ise that ryan and boom had arrived. it was about 5pm and they’d double timed it down, keep­ing close behind me. it turns out that when they reached the top of gokyo-ri, the weather had become cloudy and there was no view of everest. it actu­ally made me glad i didn’t go up. we talked for a while, ate some mex­ican style food for din­ner at the lodge, and headed to bed.

may 18 (day 13) — the next part of the trek was harder than it should have been. the hike from periche to lobuche (4930m) is not par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult and is flat for much of the way (des­pite the 600m ascent). how­ever the trip was made tough by the strong head wind we were walk­ing against.

about 30 minutes before reach­ing lobuche, we passed through the site full of memori­als for those who had per­ished on everest. we took a break to look around at the col­our­ful prayer flags, pho­to­graph the moun­tains and read the memori­als. many of the memori­als were for west­ern­ers who’d attemp­ted to climb everest. some of them were quite young (one guy was 26 years old). but some memori­als were also for the sher­pas who’d gone up the moun­tain too. i also found two korean memorial plaques.

the wind was com­ing down the moun­tains from the dir­ec­tion of everest and blow­ing a gale. it blew dust and dirt at us and by the time we got to lobuche we were all covered in dirt. just as we were arriv­ing, the han­di­capped korean team (with whom we flew from kath­mandu to luckla) were leav­ing. i sus­pec­ted that we’d bump into them, because on the way to lobuche two trains of yaks passed us headed down. they were loaded with bags which had korean writ­ten all over them. the bags were huge and the sheer num­ber of bags meant that it was a big group. sure enough, from my lodge i saw a long line of koreans march down the hill out of town. it would have been nice to say hello to them again, but it looked like i wouldn’t get a chance. one thing that was inter­est­ing though, was that in 10 days we’d hiked ethe entire west­ern route and most of the way up the east­ern route. the koreans, who were obvi­ously going to be much slower, had only got up the east­ern route and begun their trek down.

after i had a wash and a small sleep, i had an idea. i had seen a pic­ture of an italian research sta­tion just out­side of lobuche. the research sta­tion was inter­est­ing to me because it was shaped like the glass pyr­amid at the louvre museum in paris. the pho­to­graph was of the pyr­amid at night, all lit up, and i thought it would be great to get a sim­ilar photo with the moun­tains sil­hou­et­ted against the night sky and stars in the background.

so, after dark, our group made the trek out to the research sta­tion. tri­pods, cam­era gear, and flash­lights in hand, we hiked through the dark for 30 minutes to get to the facil­ity. when we arrived, the lights of the pyr­amid were turned off and the nepalese work­ers there looked none too happy to see us. neither did the italian research­ers who worked there. none the less, they wel­comed us in, but for some reason boom didn’t want to go inside. ryan stayed with her and i went in alone. they gave a quick speech but said we weren’t able to look around, since they were par­tic­u­larly busy pre­par­ing for an import­ant research project.

after that, we made our way back to our lodge, reminded by the research­ers that we’re not actu­ally sup­posed to travel through sagar­martha national park at night. the area included our entire route and everest base camp, and our guide didn’t ever men­tion that it’s not per­mit­ted to trek at night. i can see why it would be pro­hib­ited, mostly for safety reas­ons, but it never occured to us.

return­ing to the lodge, we had a laugh about the failed jour­ney out to the pyr­amid, drank some tea to warm us up, and headed to bed.

may 19 (day 14) — the walk from lobuche to gorak shep (5140m) was the final leg of our trek north and the first time i had ever been higher than 5000 meters.

the walk was mostly easy. after we reached our lodge and dumped our gear, we planned to walk up to everest base camp. it was nearly lunch time and we decided to change our sched­ule slightly. at the advice of our guide, we went instead to kala pat­tur (5545m), the hill between gorak shep and everest base camp.

kala pat­tur is pop­u­lar because it offers a very com­mand­ing view of everest and the sur­round­ing peaks. there are many pho­to­graphs of the pan­or­amic him­alayan moun­tains, with numer­ous 8000 and 7000 meter peaks within view. sadly, how­ever, the decision to make the hard trek up to kala pat­tur was a bad one. it’s quite com­mon for the him­alayan peaks (espe­cially everest) to become cloudy by lunch time. the clouds, although often small, hang on to the tops of the peaks and make the sum­mits invis­ible. when we reached the top of kala pat­tur (which took nearly three hours) the view was poor and the two most import­ant peaks — everest and lotse —  were covered in cloud. instead, we should have gone to base camp and saved kala pat­tur for early the next morn­ing … we could have gone up kala pat­tur again, but none of us had the energy to make the climb twice.

at the top we did have fun though. the view of the region was still good and we could see base camp. it was extremely windy though and i didn’t feel par­tic­u­larly safe jump­ing and climb­ing over rocks in such gusty wind. there wasn’t much to do up there, espe­cially since it was so windy, so we took a group photo and made our way down. we returned to the lodge and talked about our remain­ing schedule.

some­how, we’d man­aged to pick up some extra time in our sched­ule. so the guide sug­ges­ted mak­ing the trek out to chukkung (4743m) and do a hike up to chukkung-ri (5845m). by this time, the three of us were start­ing to get tired and a little worn out from the con­stant hik­ing. and none of us had showered in 12 days. boom was also start­ing to worry about her busi­ness and was keen to get back to a place with inter­net con­nec­tion. so instead of doing a third hill (well, it would have been my second) we agreed to head back with the inten­tion of reach­ing luckla a day early, after which we could fly to kath­mandu and have an extra day to look around. we asked our guide to arrange for our flights to be brought for­ward a day.

after that, ryan and i headed out­side the lodge to take some pho­tos of the moun­tains at sun­set. we got some nice shots, chatted with a few other trav­el­ers, then had din­ner and went to bed.

may 20 (day 15) — another early day began with the long awaited hike to everest base camp. most people don’t know much about base camp, but the camp itself is a new base camp not too far from the old base camp. both camps are reas­on­ably close together and both are still used. the closer we got to base camp the more we could see the gla­ciers that lay hid­den beneath the rocks which had tumbled down the moun­tains dur­ing a mul­ti­tude of land­slides. we all com­men­ted on how much the area looked like the moon and wasn’t in any way very attractive.

close to base camp, walk­ing along a ridge, we passed some pho­to­graph­ers who had long lenses poin­ted at everest’s peak. from near base camp the view of everest isn’t very good. the moun­tains in front con­seal much of everest and only the top part is vis­ible. from kala pat­tur the view is much bet­ter. how­ever these pho­to­graph­ers were both part of sum­mit teams. one pho­to­grapher was korean and the other was finnish. they both had radios and both were wait­ing for their teams to sum­mit (dur­ing which they were try­ing to get shots of the climbers on the moun­tain). so, we learned that there were two teams try­ing to reach the peak of everest, but actu­ally may is a good month to climb everest and we later dis­covered that there were around 200 people on the moun­tain, all wait­ing (lit­er­ally in line) to reach the summit.

we con­tin­ued our walk into base cam. actu­ally, we’d been told by another group that there are two baker­ies at base camp. we were look­ing for­ward to a slice of apple pie as our reward for mak­ing it all the way to the base of everest. how­ever, when we got there, the baker­ies had shut for the sum­mer. whilst may is a good month to sum­mit, it’s a ter­rible month for tour­ism and many of the tour­ist ori­ented facil­it­ies were shut­ting down. even the med­ical clin­ics on both the east and west­ern routes had closed. both clin­ics run on dona­tions, so there aren’t enough tour­ists to keep the place open. dur­ing emer­gen­cies, the only option was to get a heli­copter back to either namche bazaar or luckla … a very expens­ive option.

so once we reached base camp we were excited to finally be there, but also a little dis­ap­poin­ted that there’d be no apple pie. we walked around the camp and took some pho­tos. mostly, everest base camp is rocks and ice on a gla­cier. the sum­mit teams set them­selves up in tents and have a lot of gear stowed around the place.

the most inter­est­ing part (for me) was get­ting a close up look at the khumbu ice flow. i’d read about it, but never appre­ci­ated how big it was. basic­ally, there are six camps in total for sum­miters headed to everest. there’s the two base camps (old and new) and four camps on the gla­cier lead­ing to everest. camp four is a new camp and many trek­kers still use camp three as their lead off to everest. one of the most dif­fi­cult parts of actu­ally climb­ing mt everest is get­ting from base camp to camp one. the khumbu ice flow sep­ar­ates the two camps and is a dif­fi­cult, dan­ger­ous route over ice and gla­ciers. much of the ice flow is filled with deep cre­vasses. fall­ing into them would res­ult in ser­i­ous injury or death. the climbers headed to camp one use lad­ders as hori­zontal bridges between the cre­vasses. in hillary’s day, when everest was still unconquered, the khumbu ice flow was one of the biggest obstacles that had to be over­come in the race to ascend the mountain.

with the baker­ies shut, we decided to make the trek back to gorak shep. before we left, though, the finnish team offi­cially reached the sum­mit. this is cel­eb­rated at base camp by cheer­ing and the banging of pots and pans out­side the tents … to inform other teams that your team made it to the top. it was nice to be there at the point one team actu­ally reached the summit.

we walked back to our lodge, col­lec­ted our packs, and hiked down to lobuche. instead of stay­ing at gorak shep another night, we decided it would be quicker to use the remainder of the day to start our des­cent. we made lobuche by mid after­noon and, tired, settled in for the even­ing. we played more scrabble and chess. i also stopped tak­ing the diamox, since we were now des­cend­ing and i’d no longer need it. i gave the rest of my tab­lets to our guide for use dur­ing future trips.

may 21 (day 16) — des­cend­ing was mostly easy. we walked quite a long way today from lobuche to teng­boche (3860m). we were mak­ing good time and walk­ing longer dis­tances. all of us noticed that our fit­ness was much improved, we were all breath­ing eas­ily in the high alti­tudes, and didn’t feel tired or fatigued like we had earlier. actu­ally, we were all weary from the 16 days in nepal, but we weren’t as tired every day from our hik­ing. in fact, i was feel­ing much bet­ter and had stopped tak­ing after­noon naps, which i’d been doing to help recover more quickly.

at lunch time (before we reached teng­boche) ryan, boom and i went ahead by ourselves. our guide and port­ers were still eat­ing lunch, so we decided to make a run­ner and let them catch up. the three of us walked quite a long way and a few times we thought we may have taken a wrong turn through one of the small vil­lages. how­ever, we were on the right track and once we crossed the river we had a good view behind us and could see our guides com­ing up behind us.

we kept walk­ing and, a little fur­ther down the track, had the idea to wait for our guides and try to scare them. we found a big rock and hid behind it. a few minutes later the guides passed us and we rushed out from behind the rock. mahandra, one of the port­ers, was scared shit­less and didn’t know what to do. he tried to run in three dir­ec­tions at once and didn’t know whether to drop his pack or run with it on. jandra jumped, but when he turned around and saw us he smiled. he did admit that we’d scared him, and his heart was thump­ing like mad. khatka didn’t seem much scared at all. he looked sur­prised, but i don’t think he’s the type that’s eas­ily scared anyway.

we all had a good laugh and con­tin­ued on to tengboche. at teng­boche our lodge was full of tour­ists. they were a single group of about 10 or 12 for­eign­ers on their way up the him­alayas. we’d not spent any time with such a large group and our lodge felt really crowded and noisy. we were so used to being the only ones, or hav­ing a few other small groups, that the large group felt some­what overwhelming.

while we were in the lodge’s din­ing room, ryan spot­ted a bottle of liqueur that he liked. it was incred­ible that someone in a lodge (in the middle of nowhere) actu­ally had a bottle of it. the liqueur was called amarula. since we were decend­ing, we decided it was safe to have some­thing to drink. on the entire trip up we hadn’t drunk any alco­hol … partly because it’s bad for your sys­tem at high alti­tudes, partly because it is ridicu­lously expens­ive. we bought the bottle and drank some of it. the liqueur was really good. so we played scrabble and chess (again), enjoyed the liqueur, talked, and finally went to bed.

may 22 (day 17) — the walk from teng­boche to monjo (2815m) was very, very long. we hiked down hill all the way back to namche bazaar and had lunch there. we were down to our last few nepalese rupees, so we went to the bank to cash some us dollars.

after that we went to a bakery to feast on cakes and apple pie. it was fant­astic to eat some­thing dif­fer­ent (which wasn’t rice or fried noodles). boom went to check her email, so ryan and i wandered around. we were in the bot­tom sec­tion of namche, which we’d never seen before. there were a lot of inter­net cafes, souvenir shops, bars and baker­ies … so we were glad that we stayed at the top of namche, away from the touristy areas.

after lunch we made the trek to monjo. this was a dif­fi­ult part because between namche bazaar and luckla there are a lot of uphill climbs. we reached monjo tired and hungry. i played some chess with jandra and ryan. after that, someone had the idea to get some cchang. we’d heard of cchang, but didn’t know what it was like. since this was our second last day on the trail (we’d reach luckla the next day) we agreed that it would be fun to have some­thing to drink. cchang was what the loc­als drank, so ryan and i were keen to try it.

cchang is a rice wine and it’s really deli­cious. it’s not strong and being a rice wine it has quite a nice after taste. as it turns out, cchang is very sim­ilar to korean makkoli (korea’s rice wine). how­ever cchang is more mild (and less likely to cause evil hangovers), less fizzy than makkoli and also has small pieces of rice and stuff in it. i guess they could fil­ter it, but why bother. lol … cchang was pretty good and we had fun sit­ting around drink­ing it.

boom didn’t like cchang, so she drank the amarula liqueur. she got a little drunk and fell asleep in the din­ing hall. ryan and i con­tin­ued to drink until the cchang ran out and we all went to bed.

may 23 (day 18) — today was our last day of hik­ing and we all woke up excited. how­ever, my excite­ment didn’t last long, because the walk to luckla was dif­fi­cult, with some steep uphill trails to follow.

we arrived at lunch­time to dis­cover that luckla was full of tour­ists. due to excep­tion­ally bad weather, there had been no flights between kath­mandu and luckla for two days. there were nearly 300 people wait­ing to leave, a back­log of about 15 flights. the korean group that we flew in with were also in luckla wait­ing for their flight too, so we’d actu­ally caught them up.

i went for a walk to the air­port and asked one of the guys what the weather fore­cast was for tomor­row. we were sup­posed to fly the next day. i was look­ing for­ward to get­ting back to kath­mandu and hav­ing a shower. the air­port guy said that the fore­cast was for good weather. they were hop­ing to get all of the tour­ists out in one day. this was prom­ising news, so i returned to our hotel to find ryan and boom. i told them the news and we decided to go to a bakery for cake and cof­fee to celebrate!

in the even­ing we had din­ner and more cchang. we had a farewell party to say good­bye to our port­ers (who were leav­ing the next morn­ing) and cel­eb­rate our trip being fin­ished. every­one had a good time, we took some pho­tos and talked.

a bit of a side story — while we were in gokyo, there was a dutch guy at our lodge. he was loud, rude, always drunk and made inap­pro­pri­ate jokes about ryan and boom’s “wed­ding night”. the guy was a com­plete dick­head and pissed off everyone. coincidentally, he was stay­ing at the same hotel as us in luckla too. boom was a bit upset that he was there, because she’d been quite offen­ded by his remarks in gokyo.

when we arrived he recog­nised us imme­di­ately and star­ted with his usual drunken bull­shit. i’d been polite and ignored him at gokyo (our lodge was big and there was plenty of space to avoid him) but in luckla our hotel was smal­ler. so i told him to shut up and mind his busi­ness. the staff at the hotel clearly looked uncom­fort­able with him. he drank a lot, he annoyed the staff and other guests, and pretty much did as he pleased … and he cer­tainly didn’t like being ignored.

the more he drank, the louder he got. even­tu­ally he decided he didn’t want us to ignore him, so he just talked loudly to him­self. he told us to shut up (for no appar­ent reason) and called us mother­fuck­ers. the woman who runs the hotel told him that it was time for bed and he reluct­antly went back to his room.

the funny thing about it was that he seemed to think i was a priest … which is pos­sibly why he was reluct­ant to be rude to me. he knew that ryan and boom got mar­ried in gokyo, and he must have assumed that i have some capa­city to act as a cel­eb­rant. he kept call­ing me the high priest and, because i never used bad lan­guage or was offens­ive when i told him to mind his busi­ness, he thought that i must have been a man of the church. lol … it’s strange, but funny … and ironically, probably helped in that he didn’t have the balls to be such a bas­tard as he could have been (he looks like the kind of guy who likes to fight when he’s had too many whiskeys).

any­way, when he went to bed that was the last i saw of him … thank god!!! LOL

may 24 (day 19) — today star­ted like romeo and juliet, but ended in tragedy. we were so excited about fly­ing back to kath­mandu that we were all awake and packed earlier than usual. kathka told us that we were check­ing in at 10.30am, but we still got up at 6am and were keen to go to the air­port by 7am. we decide to go and pho­to­graph the planes fly­ing in … the weather was beau­ti­ful and clear, and from the hotel we could hear the first planes already com­ing and going.

we went to the air­port, dumped our gear in a corner, and walked down by the side of the run­way. i got some bad pho­tos of planes land­ing and we walked back to check in. we didn’t check in at 10.30 and waited in line for hours. we tried to find out why we couldn’t check in and we were told to just wait. i noticed that there’d been no planes for quite a while and i wondered what was going on.

at 2pm they announced that the remain­ing flights were can­celled. after lunch the weather had turned bad between kath­mandu and luckla. 13 flights had already been and gone, mean­ing that most of those wait­ing had got through, but there should have been at least two or three more flights, mean­ing we would have got seats.

ryan and i got into a hell of an arug­ment with the air­line guys. we were angry that we hadn’t got on a plane when we’d been told 10.30 check in. at the air­line counter, people had pushed in and shoved their way to the front. so we were annoyed that they hadn’t been organ­ised and we hadn’t been checked in as promised.

how­ever, it turns out that the air­line wasn’t to blame. our guide, kathka, hadn’t changed our tick­ets. he said he did. he told us that our flights were today and we’d check in at 10.30. but actu­ally, he hadn’t called the air­line and was simply hop­ing that there’d be space on a plane. because of the back­log of 300 people fly­ing out, there was no space and the air­line wasn’t put­ting us on a flight. we left the air­port and went back to our hotel. we were still angry and our guide con­fessed that it was his mis­take. the hotel owner, who also acts as a book­ing agent, was also to blame, since she knew we were leav­ing a day early and hadn’t helped change the ticket. in apo­logy, she gave us another night in her hotel for free.

we talked to the air­line again and they showed us the mani­fest for the next day. our names were down for the 6.30am flight. the mani­fest hadn’t been changed at all, which it turns out was a bless­ing in dis­guise. the air­line man­ager prom­ised us that we’d be on the first flight out tomor­row morn­ing. instead of being angry, we returned to the hotel. i didn’t even unpack or change clothes. i decided to just stay in what i was wear­ing, pick up my bag in the morn­ing, and go.

we had some din­ner and decided to try another local brew. this one was called dong ba and it was a very inter­est­ing wine made from mil­let. what was inter­est­ing was the way that it’s pre­pared. the mil­let is fer­men­ted in advance, and a big cup comes full of mil­let. there’s no water or liquid at all, it’s just mil­let. then hot water is added to the cup and we drink the water, which has mixed with the mil­let. the funny thing is that we never actu­ally drink any of the mil­let itself. there’s a tapered straw which sucks up the liquid but holds out the millet.

the drink is quite good, and the funny thing is that the drink gets stronger and stronger the more you drink it. we were even told not to stir the mil­let in the cup, because it makes the mil­let mix faster — mak­ing the drink stronger. i drank about a cup and a bit but couldn’t drink any more. it was really deli­cious but very strong. ryan liked it and drank more than me.

we’d had a long, hor­rible day and i was very keen to get some sleep. des­pite how bad the day was, i was also reluct­ant to let it spoil the trip. we’d had a fant­astic time in the him­alayas and i didn’t want it to be ruined by a flight mix up … although, it’s the first time in my life that i’ve ever missed a flight.

may 25 (day 20) — up at the crack of dawn, i had a cof­fee and we went to the air­port. without a hitch we checked in and boarded the plane. the weather wasn’t great, but we got back to kath­mandu. viray (the guy who organ­ised our trip) met us at the air­port and, in true nepalese style, the five of us (includ­ing gear) packed into the smal­lest taxi in the world for the trip to our hotel.

it was the same hotel as before, and since it was still early, we checked in and headed down­stairs to enjoy the buf­fet break­fast. after 18 days in the him­alayas, bacon tasted like heaven. i gorged myself on orange juice, grilled tomato, toast and eggs. we went to town to return our ren­ted sleep­ing bags and jack­ets, and i bought some carls­berg beer and pringles. i returned to the hotel room for a long bath, a shave and drank some beer.

the bath was so good. after 18 days without a shower i was very grotty. i had a packet of wet wipes for the trip which i used to keep the import­ant parts clean. but i didn’t have a proper show for the entire trek. after the beer and the bath i felt much better.

before break­fast i also weighed myself. my weight was 75kg. i had lost 5kg dur­ing the trek and 10kg in total since i left korea … not bad, not bad at all. i put back on 2kg while in kath­mandu (beer and bacon break­fast buf­fets will do that).

i spent the after­noon shop­ping (i bought a nepal tshirt and a north­face stor­age bag), then met ryan and boom. we returned to the korean res­taur­ant for din­ner. it was rain­ing like crazy, but we sat with the res­taur­ant owner and enjoyed his spicy kimchi­jig­gae. we asked if he had soju, but he said he doesn’t buy it because it would cost nearly $10 a bottle. ouch!

may 26 (day 21) — today was a rest day. i had another buf­fet break­fast and, with noth­ing else to do, i fol­lowed ryan and boom around town. ryan and i bought a knife each. he also bought two chess sets (pieces only, no board) and i bought one com­plete set. i spent the after­noon bum­ming around the hotel. i used their wifi to check my email and drank some cof­fee in the café down­stairs. viray invited us all to his house for lunch so ryan and boom did that. i told him i was sick and didn’t go.

may 27 (day 22) — our last day. in the morn­ing i bought a mos­quito net (which i would use for my future travels) and checked out of the hotel. viray and kathka met us again, and yet again we 5 (and gear) crammed into a micro taxi for the ride to the air­port. we said our final good­byes, checked in and flew back to bangkok.

upon our return to bangkok, ryan and boom paid for a nice hotel and we all checked in then went out for din­ner. i watched tv, enjoyed the air con, and slept.

***

our trip to nepal was fab­ulous. missed flights and drunk dutch guy aside, it was one of the most amaz­ing exper­i­ences and adven­tures of a life­time … my only real dis­ap­point­ment is that i didn’t get any good shots of everest itself. the weather didn’t come together long enough for me to get that lucky. how­ever, it doesn’t mat­ter because i’ve been told that on the tibet side of everest there are great views and it’s much easier to get to the base camp there … so i’ll have another crack at pho­to­graph­ing everest when i travel through china in a few months.

my opin­ion is that the west­ern route is much more fun and more beau­ti­ful than the east­ern route. the path to gokyo is filled with water­falls, rivers, trees, grass, lakes and beau­ti­ful snowy moun­tains. it’s an incred­ible won­der­land place to go adven­tur­ing. the east­ern route (espe­cially past periche) was all rocks. there was ice and gla­ciers but these were covered in rocks and dirt too. the east­ern val­ley looked under con­struc­tion. it looked like the moon or a war zone. for sheer beauty, nobody would go up the east­ern run at all. the only reason it exists is as a con­duit to everest.

one inter­est­ing thing about the trip was that as we hiked between towns we saw a lot of yaks. we learned that there are two kinds of yaks — yaks and yows (we called them yows, that’s not the offi­cial name). yaks are the full blooded yak with long hair. most of these come down from tibet on month long jour­neys with their hand­lers. the yows are half breed yaks and cows. their hair is shorter and appar­ently they’re cheaper to buy. mostly, we saw the half breed yaks in nepal. the yak trains cart­ing gear up and down the moun­tains are all half breed.

when walk­ing along the trails we had to be quite care­ful. the tracks are usu­ally nar­row and when yak trains pass in the other dir­ec­tion we had to be care­ful where we stood. the yaks were usu­ally quite timid and didn’t like to come too close to strange people, but i heard lots of stor­ies about beli­ger­ent yaks push­ing people off the track (often down the moun­tain). so we were always care­ful to stand uphill of the yaks when the passed us.

being may, there were also quite a few yak calves. boom got really excited every time she saw a calf and wanted to get closer to them. of course, they’d run away (usu­ally fur­ther up or down the hill). she man­aged to feed a yak on a couple of occa­sions, but mostly we couldn’t get close to them unless they were passing us along the tracks.

the tracks them­selves were pretty ugly. the paths were trod­den down to dirt in many places (where it wasn’t rock or ice) and the paths were filled with yak shit. because we were fol­low­ing the moun­tains, we usu­ally walked along ridges which were quite close to large drop offs. it’s easy to see how a tour­ist could fall off one of the paths and ser­i­ously hurt them­selves, or even be killed. it was rare that the track was more than a meter wide. this, com­bined with the mud, snow and ice, made the paths slip­pery and dan­ger­ous … espe­cially up the steeper inclines.

actu­ally, it wasn’t hik­ing up that wor­ried me, even though it was hard work … hik­ing down the steep steps and rocks wor­ried me more. going down means that slip­ping is more likely to res­ult in a fall. for­tu­nately, i didn’t fall dur­ing my entire trek (ryan had a couple of small spills) and i con­sider myself lucky in that regard … i’m not the most sure-footed per­son around.

the frus­trat­ing part of the trip was the ‘nearly there’ feel­ing. we’d come around a long ridge or over the top of a hill and i’d think “yay, we’re nearly there” … only to find more ridges and more hills ahead of me. the hike to namche was bad for me. the turns and switch­backs never ended. it was tir­ing and i was exhausted. every time we got to some kind of peak or point, there’d be a bunch more to come.

des­pite all that, i’d never give up that trip for any­thing in the world … as far as trav­el­ing goes, it’s def­in­itely one of the biggest high­lights for me.

i’d like to say con­grat­u­la­tions to my friends ryan and boom on their wed­ding. thanks for let­ting me be a part of that and for shar­ing such a remark­able adventure.

but i’d like to fin­ish this post by pay­ing my sol­emn respects to those who have been on the paths to everest and never made it home.

at the check­point there were two posters for tour­ists who’d got lost some­where along the everest trails. one guy was a brit and the other was chinese. both had been miss­ing for over six months and there’s vir­tu­ally no chance that either is still alive.

while we were hik­ing we saw numer­ous heli­copters dash­ing from place to place. one chop­per, we knew, was going to base camp and back. it made four or five runs dur­ing our trek up the east­ern route, most of which were for climbers who’d been hurt or had suffered severe ams. we also heard about two japan­ese tour­ists who’d fallen off a moun­tain dur­ing some tech­nical climb­ing on the west­ern route. they’d been air­lif­ted out while we were at namche.

the count­less memorial stones near lobuche are also a reminder of the people who per­ish on the face of everest itself.

the him­alayas are a place of incred­ible beauty and won­der. the nepalese believe that everest is alive and has a spirit of its own. the sher­pas spend days pray­ing before they make their ascents up the mighty moun­tain. one sherpa had just made his 19th suc­cess­ful sum­mit up everest. a world record. yet, des­pite these small achieve­ments the him­alayas will always remain an untamed wil­der­ness which must be respec­ted and feared …

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