Gorkhā

This was the hardest challenge of my entire life.

We all managed to stay warm in the night, thankfully. However, we all slept pretty badly due to the altitude (it makes you sleep restlessly because there's little oxygen), so when we woke in the dark at 3 am, we were all kinda glad to begin.

After trying to stomach some Tibetan fried bread with egg, which was a terrible choice for so early in the morning, we got ourselves together and began our most challenging experience yet.

It was pitch black, so everyone was wearing their head torches along the path, and if you looked around, you could just see little lights slowly moving up the mountain. Mine and James' stomachs quickly started protesting the fried bread that morning, and with the combination of 55% less oxygen and little sleep, things already felt bad in our bellies.

At about 5 am, the sun was starting to hit the mountain peaks, and the view began to look like a poster picture of incredible images. The orange and pink of the sky reflected off some of the mountains onto others, and it was probably one of the most incredible things I'll ever see.

It was incredible but also somewhat hard to enjoy as all I could think about was how hard it was to put one foot in front of the other and get enough breath. It looked and felt like we were walking in slow motion.

At 4,900m, (1.5h away from the 5,100m peak), the altitude hit me the hardest. I felt incredibly lethargic and light-headed. I started worrying I was going to faint or that I'd have to turn back. We stopped for a moment, and Mitra gave me some coke which didn't seem like it helped initially, but after 10 mins, I think it kicked in. By now, the snow was many feet thick, and it was a gamble every time you put your foot down if it would hold or your foot would fall deep into the snow. The sun had risen fully and was blinding against the snow, and we were getting incredibly warm in our down jackets and multiple layers.

After my wobble, I set my mind to getting over the peak and just getting the hell down from here. This one thought of starting our descent, as we couldn't turn back and there was no other way to get down, was what drove me on and on. As we came to the peak, Mitra, who was ahead of us, exclaimed "You made it!" And James, Cecilia and I all started crying uncontrollably. We had made it. We all found it so hard, at moments we each felt like we weren't going to make it. It's hard to describe the relief and happiness we all felt to have actually achieved this mammoth task. We all hugged, cried, and took photos. Cecelia had promised she was going to do burpees on the peak for her bootcamp. Amazingly, she did 10 when she initially thought she'd only be able to do one.

After 10-15 minutes, we began our descent, but it turned out the challenge wasn't over yet. Going down, the snow got very slippery and even after applying our crampons, when we got to a huge side of the mountains with slushy snowy switchbacks for 2 hours, we all hated it. I was so scared of hurting my ankle again. James admitted to me on the peak that he already had zero energy and so was slipping quite a lot due to the lack of energy.

After descending 776m, we finally arrived at the first building after the pass. In a fog of tiredness and pain, we sat down, and then in shock at what we'd just achieved, we began laughing and crying hysterically.

The food was the most glorious thing I'd ever eaten, and afterwards, we descended into a silent stupor. We still had just under 5 km left until we arrived at our tea house for the night. We actually tried to get a price for a donkey to ride us the rest of the way, but no luck. At this point, we realised we'd be awake and walking for 12 hours.

We arrived at the cutest tea house we'd stayed in yet, all of us with our own little cabins and a glorious hot shower. All the ladies washed their hair. We then all gathered in the dining hall where the fire was roaring, and we tucked into our dinner, and then promptly went to bed at 7 pm because we'd been up for SO long.Read more