Menjuṅ Kholā

Slept up against the outdoor wall of the shack at base camp, I spent the night huddled up with my water filter and electronics in my sleeping bag with me to save them from the bitter cold wind which spilled between the wall's wooden planks. And apart from synchronous 2 am awakenings to glug some icy water and stave off our severe dehydration, we appeared to be clear of any signs of altitude sickness.

Cue 4:45 am and our plan kicks into action, mashing our things into our bags and throwing on our warmest layers to brave the strong icy crosswind of the dark dawn up to the peak. But we weren't alone, and in fact, we weren't nearly the first people to set off for the summit; the pastel colours of the sky revealing the lengthy line of trekkers making their pilgrimage to look out upon Nepal's 8000-metre monsters on the horizon. Among them: Everest, Lhotse, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Makalu, Manaslu, Cho Oyu, Kangchenjunga, all iconic names towering and jostling for space in one big line which seemed to expand from western Nepal one way to the Indian border in the east (though to be honest we struggled picking out exactly which mountain was which). We soaked in the view for a while even after almost every other trekker had moved on (and also after Thomas had made me take a photo of him with literally everything). Once we did decide to move on, Thomas couldn't help but run up the second summit at 4064 m, while I sat and admired looking down on a drifting plane from above.

Following 500 m of descent, the adrenaline had long worn off, and we stopped for some breakfast to fend off our feelings of being gruesome: having not eaten, nor drank while sweating hard in clammy warm clothes with the sun now shining. Breaking up our brunch to have with some chat with welshman Rob and Portuguese Raul, we took off again to finish our long descent back down into the valley. Other than handing out some chocolate to Nepalese children during a lunch stop, the rest of the day became a simple trundle into the village of Junbesi, where we have struck gold with this gem of a teahouse, albeit containing a very naughty cat who kept trying to steal our dinners. But regardless, had my first hot shower since Kathmandu, and god it feels good to be clean!!Read more