From Hull to Everywhere Else

Hello everyone. Time for a new entry. I’m writing this on my phone so it will probably be even less coherent than usual. My laptop is back in Kathmandu along with much of my stuff as I’m on the Everest Base Camp trek. Just to be clear this is just a trek to the base camp. The hard part of reaching the summit I’ll leave to people who are even crazier than me. This is a trek from Lukla to Everest base camp over 12 days. Having just completed day 2 I can tell you it’s hard. I should have done more training. My legs feel like they’re on fire. Today day 3 is a rest/acclimatisation to altitude day at the town of Namche bazaar.

So day 1 was from Kathmandu to Luklu. Luklu is the gateway to Everest. It’s famous for its scary airport. Get the landing wrong and there’s a cliff in the way at the end of the runway. Taking off you essentially fly off a cliff. You can only land here with good visibility so the flights are very likely to be cancelled or delayed. This happened to me. I got up at 3.45am to get a taxi to the airport from the hostel Kwabahal in Kathmandu. The flight was scheduled at 6.00. Apparently you want to get the earliest flights as they are more likely to fly at all than later flights. But due to bad visibility we were nonetheless delayed for maybe two hours. I’m not sure what the plane was but it was closer to a jump plane than an airliner. There were maybe 16 of us on board filling it up and our luggage was stuffed in the back. Well I say our - my rucksack for some reason came on the following plane. I’m not sure that was deliberate.

After arrival I met up with my guide Sajar and - once my rucksack had caught up with me - we set out. I have no clear recollection of what time we started but today was only half a day. I was surprised by how green the scenery was. It could have been Wales or the Lake District. Except for the bridges. These were chain bridges over the various rivers. 200 foot drops and it was possible to look down between the metal we were walking on to see the ground. And with people on the bridges they became very shaky. Not for those with a heights issue.

At about 3pm arrived at the first overnight stop. It was more civilised than I expected. I was expecting essentially a hut but there were hotels - admittedly basic ones - with hot showers and the internet. Whether that will be the case all the way remains to be seen. At the time of writing I have zero memory of what that hotel looked like (they are called tea houses btw). I think that is due to the fact that I’m currently at 3410 metres asl. Not terribly high but enough to start the brain rot. I found a guitar at the place I currently at but my playing was terrible. Some would say more terrible. Was missing chords and fretting the wrong fret all the time. Nevertheless it is always nice to play.

Day 2 was a trek to Namche Bazaar, where I am now. I’ll have to check the distance and altitude gain but after lunch it got hard. Relentlessly uphill. Normally when ascending you look for the top and can use that as a psychological crutch. But not here. It goes up, ever up, for another 5.5 km. I can’t imagine how mentally tough those guys who did this initially must have been. They had no support systems and no tech to speak of. This afternoon on my rest day I visited the Sherpa museum and they had a load of photos and equipment from Hillary, Tenzing and all the other Everest conquerors. They all looked so different to how we look now. More real somehow. So I’ve managed two days. It goes like this - two days on, one day off, until a quick sprint to Everest base camp and then three days descent. Apparently an ever higher proportion of people choose the helicopter option to descend. I thoroughly understand. When I climbed El Misti in Peru I reached the top but never thought I’d have the energy to get down. Fortunately there you could literally run down the side of the volcano that was covered in volcanic ash - that will be one of my more joyful memories. However here that is not an option (also I was 25 years younger!). It’s fly down or hike down. Anyway I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m still not sure I’ll make it to base camp. It is very tough. And that’s only 5500 meters! But the trick is to just put one foot in front of the other. That and don’t get altitude sickness.Les mer