Everest Base Camp. The name seems monumental. The entire trek has been aiming at this goal. Seven days of putting one foot in front of the other, breathing air that cannot even support plant life, and looking at the peak of Mount Everest in the distance. Six nights of sub-zero temperatures, dirty clothes, and no showers. Incredible landscapes, endearing locals, new friends and lasting memories.

Everest Base Camp itself is a small field of sharp rocks at the bottom of a landslide at the end of a glacier. There is no view of Everest. Just rocks, and ice. We knew this before we got there because we could see it from the top of Kala Pattar the day before. We even jokingly discussed not making the three hour trip to the camp. Jokingly.

The day started at 6:00am when we shivered out of bed and jumped into our warmest clothes. Everything I owned was dirty at this point, and I had not even taken my thermals off in two days. It was so cold out at night that I was forced to sleep in them if I wanted to stay warm in the miserable sleeping bag I had rented. I smelled like a cross between an old foot, and a football locker. Everyone smelled this way, so we didn’t really notice.

Udept, the guide the Germans had hired, was feeling very sick that morning, and opted not to go along with us to base camp. He was going to quickly depart to lower altitude, and told the Germans he would meet up with them back in Pereche, a small village about 1000 feet lower.

We packed some biscuits and chocolate to eat for breakfast at base camp, and left the relative warmth of the lodge.

Sunrise

This was the first time in my life that I have ever seen a glacier, and it was pretty cool. Most of it was covered in rocks and debris, but every so often there was a section of exposed ice that made little 30 foot blue -white cliffs in the otherwise brown surface. Walking on this glacier was an experience, and the sounds of ice on rock would echo throughout the canyon at intervals. This thing was moving, slowly enough that it was imperceptible, but it was moving. Pasang-Dawa was chanting during the beginning of the trip, and we were panting for the whole thing. Walk, break, rest. Finally Pasang-Dawa called us to a halt and said that we were there.

Glacier

Huh? Really? We scouted out the area, and finally found a small pile of rock that had been tagged with prayer flags. This signified the actual Base Camp. As I had said, we were not expecting anything great, but not even knowing when we were there shocked us all. We set up the camera and grabbed some shots quickly to prove we had made it, them we started playing around with the landscape. We were on a relativity flat area full of sharp rocks and large boulders. There was just enough room to set up a few tents, but they would be right on top of the sharp rocks.

At Base Camp

We were more interested in the ice flows and frozen patches. We found a frozen patch at the bottom of a hill, and began rolling large boulders down onto it to try to break the ice. No luck, this stuff was thick! After playing around for a while, we decided to head back, since we were going to hike part of the way home and wanted to do it as early as possible.

USA! USA! USA! – That one is for you Kerley…

On the way back to the lodge, Pasang-Dawa and I decided that if we could, we would make it all the way to Deboche today, which is about half way back to the airport. We told the German’s our plan and they said go ahead. So we took off, Pasang-Dawa with my bag and me with his. We flew down the mountain. We paused only a few times, but I spent most of the rest of that day in a half run after him. Once he knew that he would be able to be back home the next day, he got the energy of the gods under his feet.

Bouldering around base camp

We slept in Deboche that night, after arriving sometime around 3:00pm. 3-4 is generally the latest you can trek because the fog rolls in and the weather turns miserable after this. The only food I had eaten all day was biscuts and chocolate, so I order a plate of fried ric with eggs right away. I was craving anything besides Dal Batt, the rice with lentils I had been eating for the past week. I was so tired and brain dead that I curled up in my fleece liner and tried to read, but ended up falling asleep for a while. When I woke up, dinner was over and people were getting ready for bed. I sat with a couple form New Zeland for a while next to the stove before calling it a night myself and returning to my sleeping bag.

I wanted to make it all the way back to the airport that day, so we woke up bright and early again (around 5:30am) and started walking. We had three hours to Namche, then six more to the airport in Luklah. Long day. We made it to Namche a little early, and we stopped here for an hour. Pasang-dawa had hurt his ankle, and needed to rest, and I needed to get some money so I could pay him and breakfast.

The town of Namche was at least twice as busy as it had been the week before when I stayed there. There were now large tour groups of up to 20 people sitting around, waiting for their guides to tell them what to do. Many groups had Yaks and teams of porters. I am so glad I did not book through a normal tour group. I talked to some of them, and they were paying around $1,500 USD to be treated like cattle and herded up the mountain. No thank you, I learned my lesson about booking tour groups in Halong Bay.

We spent the rest of the day jumping down the mountain on our way to the airport. The whole time we had been walking, Pasang-Dawa kept going out of the way to go around these large carved rocks. Apparently you have to go around them clockwise or it is bad luck. Sometimes I would not even see the rocks coming, and Pasang would whistle to let me know I missed the path around them, so I would backtrack and climb up and around the rocks to make sure we had good luck. About halfway down the path both of our knees started hurting quite a bit from the rapid descent. We decided to start rotating the bag and I took some ibuprofen so that I could continue to walk.

The way back took us very near to Pasang’s house, and he really wanted me to see his place and meet his mother, so I went along behind him up the side of a mountain on a little back woods trail to his house. We passed through a school on the side of the hill where little girls were playing hopscotch and other games and the children ran out to see this foreigner who was coming through their town. His house was set in the middle of a field of green grass, with some potatoes growing behind and prayer flag poles flying in front. I finally realized how poor Pasang’s family was.

Pasang and his mother – Pasang in his best jacket for the photo.

His house was one room, with a little partition separating the area where he slept form the main room where his mother sleeps. She cooked me some food to eat and gave me some tea. I paid Pasang, and gave him my fake Marmut waterproof jacket and pants. He greatly appreciated it because he didn’t have anything that was waterproof. As we were leaving his mother gave me a silk scarf that was supposed to be good luck.

Pasang’s Mother

I ended up carrying the bag the last half hour uphill and realized that without Pasang-Dawa, I never would have made this trip. After half an hour of carrying the bag uphill I was red faced, sweating, and ready to die. Whew. We ran into a monk that Pasang knew and were told that Lakbah and Sue (The Australian who was bringing medicine in on the plane) were in one of the lodges getting ready to leave the next day as well. We went to this lodge and checked in. I had lost my towel, so I went out and bought a new one, and a washcloth, and took the best shower of my life. They had hot water and I stayed in for about 20 minutes scrubbing myself of a week of dirt and trekking sweat. I met a couple form England in my lodge, and they had met a few girls from Ireland, so we all went to the one pub in the town, which happened to be an Irish pub, and enjoyed a few Everest Beers. We had all just finished the trek to base camp and back, so the mood was festive and it was a great ending to the trip.

The next morning at the airport, Sue, Lakbah, and myself got ready to head out, as we were on the same flight. I checked in a bag for them (of potatoes) because they were over their carry limit, and ended up getting another scarf from one of the monks that was with them because I had helped them on the way in and on the way out.

I slept most of the flight back, which was good because we had to circle for an hour before we could land, but I had no idea and thought the flight was normal length. I finally would get to experience Kathmandu for the first time.

If you have not read Part 1 yet, you should probably do that first.

That night, while we were bundled up around the stove in the old blankets all the lodges keep around, Chris came in telling us we needed to come outside right away to see something. The thought of leaving the warm room was depressing, but he was insistent and had already run back out, so Tommy and I went out to join him. He was standing with his head thrown back, staring up at the sky. Our eyes followed and we both froze in the same position, forgetting that it was -5 degrees. The stars were incredible. For every one star I had ever seen before, there were now 1000 of them. Orion’s belt had blended in with a light show of millions of pinpoints. We were so high and so far away from light, that there was nothing, not even a significant amount of air, preventing us from seeing all the starts there are to see. I got out my camera and tried some night photography, but left my remote at home, so I had to hold it open the entire time… not conducive to steady camera work when your hands are shaking like maracas.

As I was going to sleep I had concerns about taking it to fast up the mountain. There had been signs all along the trail saying “Go Slow, Altitude Kills.” I have heard the statistic is that a few people have to get air lifted off the mountain every year because of altitude sickness, and I didn’t want to be one of them. I wasn’t exactly sure how to contact my travel insurance company from the mountains. (Whoops, probably should have checked that out before I left huh?) We talked to a few guides that were staying in the area, and they said that if we were having no problems in Dingboche, then it would be fine to go on to Loboche, which is about 4900 meters. After talking it out we decided that if we felt sick, we could always turn around, since the height was the same we were going to be doing on our acclimatization day anyway.

We woke up around 8:00am and packed out stuff to head out. By this height, prices had started to rise and I was averaging 700-900rs a day, which is about $15-$18 USD., and the thought of cutting a day off the trip sounded nice. Soon after setting out, we came upon an Irish couple who were sitting with their guide on some rocks, panting and coughing. They said they were fine, so we passed them bye and kept heading across the dirt and scrub grass hill to the end of the valley. We were on the top of a hill, but the hill was actually a 30 story bump in a valley made by two towering mountains on either side. They were so gigantic that looking up at them made you dizzy.

We were taking it easy to make sure we didn’t have trouble with altitude, and we rested often. During one of these rest breaks, the Irish couple, or maybe they were brother and sister… I can’t really remember, came wheezing up. They sat down and just kind of looked miserable and naive at the same time. The doctors in training decided to take a look at them, and Tommy actually pulled a stethoscope out of his bag. It turns out that the guy has fluid in his lungs, and she is struggling with the lack of air. They both had headaches from coming up too fast, and it was actually the fault of their guide. He had an exam he had to take back at the bottom of the trail in a few days, and was trying to hurry up to base camp and back in time for him to make the extra two day journey to the testing center. The Irish people had just gone along with him figuring he knew best. The now pseudo field doctors convinced them to go back down and take a rest day to see if they could recover.

Part of the trip to Loboche involved going through something called “Loboche Pass”, a steep, boulder strewn cut on the side of a ridge that goes up about the length of three football fields. Some brilliant businessman has opened a tea house right at the bottom of it where most people stop to eat, catch their breath, and make jokes about the upcoming climb just so they don‘t have to think about how much it sucks. He makes a killing because people don’t want to leave.

We rested, took some photos, then headed out. This one cut took about an hour to get through because we would pick from one boulder to the next, each a full knee bend step up, then heave ourselves across and begin panting. Rest, shuffle forward, step up a boulder, pant, rest, repeat. We were dead tired at the top and still had a good trek ahead of us.

Loboche consisted of sitting by the tables, wrapped in blankets, eating garlic soup (it is supposed to help with altitude?) and for Tommy and myself – dealing with killer headaches. Maybe going up that day wasn’t such a good idea after all. I was okay when I didn’t move, blink, or think, so I stared at a salt shaker for the better part of half an hour before Chris just told me to take a decent dose of ibuprofen. This promptly made it feel better and I was able to function again. We decided that if we woke up with headaches, we would stay for another day to get used to the altitude. The night was early for all of us as the pass had worn us out, and we were all feeling slow and stupid from the lack of oxygen. At this altitude, there is less than 60% of the normal oxygen available to breathe.

We had a long day, so we woke up at 5:30 to get ready to leave. I woke up to chanting, and realized that Pasang-Dawa was sitting cross legged in his bed with his hands folded in front of him. I don’t know how long he had been chanting for, but I realized he must have been doing this everyday, and only because I had to wake up so early did I notice it. When he heard me stirring, he opened his eyes and asked me if I wanted some tea. Bizarre. It turns out that he does chant every morning, and once he knew it didn’t bother me, he started doing it later, and would sometimes be chanting for the first three hours of a trek. Just chanting and walking along with my bag on his back, as if he was singing walking songs. Every so often he would put his hands together as he was going along and bow, so we knew he was still going at it.

No headaches upon awaking, but if we thought that the previous day’s pass had been tough, the day of the trip from Loboche to Gorak Shep, which is the highest village about three hours from base camp, was a killer because it was so long. We got to Gorak Shep pretty early and had lunch while we waited for the sun to get in a good position for some Everest photos from Kala Pattar. Kala Pattar is the highest we were going to go, and is a little hill surrounded by a 360 degree ring of mountains. One of these is Everest, and a great view of it can be had from the top. The trip up took just as long as the pass because we were so worn out from lack of O2. I plugged in my iPod for the first time in the trip and started listening to songs that my addled mind thought made sense while going up a mountain. “Riders in the Sky” by Johhny Cash, “Oh my God” from the Kiser Chiefs, “Drive” by REM, then finally “Chopin: Nocturne In C Sharp Minor.” It just seemed appropriate for the view.

View from Kala Pattar

Close up Collage of Everest

In front of Everest

When we woke up the next morning, we were going to Base Camp, which is Part 3.

So much to go over. This has been one of the longest periods of time that I have gone without updating… I think.  So I am back in Katmandu, seeing it for the first time really since I was only here for less than 12 hours the first time. Which is where the story begins.

I left Bangkok and got to the airport for my flight in plenty of time, but encountered the usual amount of annoyance and harassment from the security people. I had bought a tube of honey in Thailand that I wanted to take with me up to Everest, but it was 130 ml, and the maximum allowed container is 100 ml. I drank 30ml of honey in front of the guard after she said that that would make it ok, but her boss came over (after I drank it) and said no go. So I walked around the corner, put the tube in  my pocket and returned, telling them I had thrown it away. The honey made it on the plane.

The ride was uneventful, but the views of some of the mountains were incredible. I didn’t see Everest sticking out above the clouds, even though I made sure I was sitting on the correct side of the plane. Upon landing, all the Nepalese on the flight began clapping and cheering because we made it safely. This did not make me feel good about the flight I had just made!

We landed around 5:30pm (Katmandu is 1 hour and 15 minutes behind Bangkok, the 15 minutes is so they can be “Unique”, something very important to their country as it is slowly becoming northern India.) and Arjun was there to pick me up. Arjun is a guy I met through Couchsurfing, and he runs a trekking company. Before I met him however, I walked through the  darkened airport, where they only had lights in about half of it because of power cuts.  I passed a coffin coming off the luggage truck and decided I had really entered the third world.

Arjun and I got into a beat up old car (I think it was a Datsun, circa 1982) and were roughly delivered to his home. It was raining, so I only got to see bits and pieces of the city as we passed by, but it struck me as a rat’s nest. Not in terms of criminal activity, but in terms of organization and cleanliness.  There is currently a gas shortage here because India is cutting them off so there are lines for gas that go on for two days. After a quick hello to his wife and child we ran to the backpacker / shopping / main area of town to buy some warm clothes and a sleeping bag. I got a full outfit of North Fake gear, including socks, thermal underwear, windstopper jacket, outershell, goretex pants and gloves and a fleece hat for US $ 127. Gotta love trademark and copyright laws.  The gear is of course fake, but the quality is very close to the original.

Packed my bag that night and got ready to leave at 5:30am the next morning.

Let’s see if I can pick the speed up a little. 5:30am taxi, double prop plane, 12 passengers, 30 minute flight from Kathmandu to Luklah. Cool, now I am in Luklah. That was fast. In reality it was a flight that was delayed for four hours because of clouds, fog and wind. They just wait until there is an opining at one airport and fire off planes to the other, where they circle until there is an opining there. We were flying in valleys and below mountains, so the ride was very entertaining.  

While waiting for the plane in Katmandu I met a woman named Sue from Australia that had a very interesting story, and ended up changing my whole trip. She was bringing medicine to the father of a Nepali woman about two hours walk from Luklah. She had taken the Nepali woman under her wing 10 years ago and brought her to Australia where she is now the head cook at the hotel Sue owns. He real father was now sick and dying of cancer, but could get no medicine stronger than ibuprofen in the mountains. Sue was meeting her in Luklah and bringing in morphine and other supplies.

I helped Sue unload her luggage when we arrived (and there was quite a bit of it, mattresses, fresh food, clothes, etc…) and met Lakba, the Nepali woman. They were going to start trekking the two hours to Gaht, a small town on the way to Everest. I said I would help them as far as I could, and we headed out. When we got to the little town next to the airport, we stopped at a tea house owned by one of Lakba’s relatives (of which I was to find out there were many along the trip) and had lunch. Fried potato pancake with nak butter. A nak is a female yak, and the Sherpas will laugh if you ever ask for yak cheese or yak butter, cause you can’t milk a yak.  Lakba also helped me get Nepali prices on some chocolate, cheese and a yak wool sweater for the trip.

Lakba’s cousin Pasang-Dawa was also there as a porter to help carry things. He didn’t speak much English, but was funny and good natured, although a little quite. By the time we made it down to Gaht, I was already feeling the weight of my pack and knew I was in trouble. After talking to Lakba and Sue, they suggested that I hire him as a porter, and he agreed. We settled on 600rs a day, which is about $9 USD. I kept trekking for about another hour, and he met me the next morning at my tea house after taking care of what he needed to and getting his clothes. His bag was the size of a football, mine a linebacker. About the same weights as well. ( I later put it on a scale at the airport, and it was 12 kg, so not quite that heavy, but still).

He threw it on his back, smiled and off we went. We first had to stop by his monastery, for he was a monk and he had to get a blessing for the trip. This done we began heading up the mountain across bridges, trails and yak caravans to a place called Namche Bazar. This is the most developed town in the Kumbu region where we were. Getting there took a good four or five hours of constant trekking uphill. We moved up almost 1000m vertically  in that time and I could really feel the lack of oxygen. Pasang-Dawa didn’t even notice. [photo]  Upon arrival, we checked into a lodge and got some much needed food. I got momos, which are a sort of vegetable or meat spicy mix packed into a fried bread pouch. Really good. That night there was a group of trekkers all my age coming down from base camp, and we all played cards next to the wood burning heat stove in the main room. It gets dark early in the lower part of the mountains, and a late night is 8 pm.

Up early for my acclimatization day, we trekked up to the Everest view hotel, which is a posh place that primarily caters to Japanese businessmen and their families. At this point I was breaking the 4500meter boundary, plenty high enough for my lungs and head to be telling me they were struggling to keep up. We went to two different little villages, saw the Edmund Hillary Hospital, and then went back to Namche. The reason for this is to encourage the body to build more red blood cells and start the process of adapting to less oxygen. Go high during the day, then sleep low. I woke up feeling much better, and we started the shorter, three to four hour trek to Tengboche. When we got there, we realized it had only taken us three hours, so we hoofed it for another hour and a half to Pangboche, a little further up the trail.

The Sherpa who owned the tea house I picked has been to the top of Everest six times and is going again in April. I talked with him for a while about his trips, then got a shot of him and his wife the next morning. I was the only one at the lodge, and Pasang-Dawa had gone to see his sister in the next village over, so the three of us (the Sherpa, his wife, and myself) sat around talking and reading all afternoon and night.

From here we headed up yet again to Dingboche, another small village of about 30 homes / lodges. We originally went to some of Pasang-Dawa and Lakba’s relatives lodge, but it was very expensive, so I switched to a different one, where I met some Germans, Chris and Tommy, who were as sick of being in lodges by themselves as I was.  They were both medical students and had been in Pokera for a while. Chris made a small version of the board game “Sorry” out of his medical kit using tape and what not and we played all evening.  They had a guide, but were carrying their own bags. The five of us, being Chris, Tommy, Me, Pasang-Dawa, and Untrep (I think…) who was their guide all went the rest of the way to base Camp together.

I was planning on another acclimatization day in Dingboche, but the student doctors said I would be fine, and I took their word for it.

Part two coming soon… and pictures to flickr as well!

Power in Kathmandu goes out for several hours a day on a rotating schedule, and I have not been able to get my laptop online… so it will be a little bit before the complete update comes. So far it is four pages and I am only starting, so be ready for a small novel.

I leave for Nepal in an hour. I will be out of contact for at least two weeks, if not more, and to tell the truth – it makes me happy. I have spend way to much time on this damn computer over the past few months of travel. So I will finally be free! Free from updates, free from uploading photos, free from electricity, roads, smog, noise, heat and everything else.

I really don’t want you guys to stop reading the blog though, so please sign up in the box to the right so you will get an email when I get back and update. The trip isn’t over by a long shot. I should have a ton of pictures to upload when I get back, and I just bought a lot of new photo gear and can’t wait to use it. Also, be sure to comment on the contest post if you would like the chance to win a full color book of photos from my trip.

To keep you busy, here are some links to sites I read:

Zach Morris
www.zachmorris.com

My buddy Zach started in South America, and is now in Isreal, Egypt, Jordan, and the middle east. He has been keeping an incredibly detailed blog, and I think he is a more interesting writer than I am. (Maybe that is because I am not doing what he is… so it actually seems new!)

Rob Zwick
www.robzwick.com

I met Rob in Bangkok, then stayed with him for a week in Laos. He is a great photographer, and has a lot of his stuff online. He posts half in German, half in English, but you can translate the page for a quirky interpretation.

Kevin Kelly
www.kk.org

Kevin is the Editor at Large of Wired Magazine, and a brilliant man. Whether he knows it or not, he is one of the reasons I am on this trip. He also introduced my father and me to Burning Man. His site is full of interesting commentary on modern life, technology, and where the world is headed. Check out the Technium while you are there.

Wikitravel
www.wikitravel.com

Great constantly updated travel site that I use quite often.

LifeHacker
www.lifehacker.com

Increase your productivity in interesting ways.

With that, I bid you adieu until I return from Sagarmatha. (Nepalese word for Everest, meaning “Goddess of the Sky”.)

-Ben