We knocked the [Base Camp] off

There wasn't heaps of good cheap wi-fi in the Nepali highlands (speaking of which, congratulations #gigatowndunedin!) but we made it up to Everest Base Camp and back in two pieces and have survived to tell the tale. Back in Kathmandu our most pressing engagement is to sleep for 24 hours to restore our vital stats to their factory settings (making up for two weeks of lost oxygen and body temperature - or that's our excuse and we're sticking to it).

Here's what all's gone down in the mountainside meanwhile...

Our first glimpse of Everest was a timid little peep-show halfway up the 3-hour climb to Namche Bazaar on day two.  But the following day when we hauled ourselves on to the Tenzing Norgay memorial statue a few hundred metres further up, she was out and proud in all her glory.

The world's highest peak is that one over Tenzing's head which his ice-pick points down to. You wouldn't believe it to stand there and look. All those other ones are so many kilometres closer that they seem to stand taller than the tallest of them all. Which just goes to show you... something profound about perspective or whatever, you know.

Near the memorial is a little museum featuring items of natural, cultural and historical relevance to the region. We learned that Mt Everest was named in 1865 by a guy (Colonel Waugh) after his mentor and surveying predecessor (Colonel Everest) who said that you should always name a geographical object by the name the locals give it. The problem Waugh faced back then was that the different groups of locals living within sight of Everest each had their own different names for it. And they didn't even know for sure then that it was the highest mountain in the world. But for the record, the Sherpas round these ways have always known it as Sagarmatha.  Easiest to remember as a mispronounciation of 'sugar mother.'

In Namche Bazaar, we met this guy called Anu who was selling souvenirs and handicrafts.

Blandy asked him about that historical first ascent in 1953. He said he remembered the day as a small boy when all the villagers dressed up in their traditional costumes to welcome the heroic mountaineers on their descent, and it was like a carnival in the Bazaar with much music and dancing. He said that his own father, a renowned mail runner, was given the honourable task of delivering the news of the successful summit from Edmund Hillary at Base Camp to the New Zealand Embassy in Kathmandu. Apparently the message took just five days to get through. Respect!

With the rest of our 'acclimatisation day' free to spend as we pleased, we stopped in at a toasty little cafe screening a free movie on the life and accomplishments of Sir Ed.  What a legend!  The doco showed photos of that big man as a lad, narrated by Sir Ed voicing his feelings of inadequacy and the notion that he was only a runty little guy with not much going for him.

... Shows that even the slowest of starters can achieve great things!  Turns out a couple years before Hillary's great crowning achievement in 1953 (sorry for the pun royalists!), he had narrowly missed out on the glory of summiting another peak to a couple of blokes he viewed as less-capable team mates.  That deep sorrow helped spur Hillary upwards on Everest, even with her extreme and then unknown physical challenges.  When Tenzing reached the top of Everest, Hillary said he popped out his hand to welcome Tenzing in a gentlemanly manner, but Tenzing flung his arms around him and they congratulated each other on the top of the world!  It was when the lads came back down to EBC, and the Expedition leader Sir Jonathan Hunt questioned Hillary about their feat that cheeky Ed said 'we knocked the bastard off!'

A photo of a photo of the two boys on their successful Everest expedition.

Hillary is a hero for many reasons.  After his big climb and seeing he could help the Himalayan people, he built schools, hospitals and rebuilt the Tengboche Monastery after a fire destroyed the original.  And looking back Sir Ed said he'd never fully recovered from the loss of his true-love, and his daughter who both so sadly died in a plane accident.  His remaining adult children inferred that they kinda lost their father at that point too, as he distracted himself by being busy helping the Sherpa people.  Curiously though, it seems some jealousy festers in the Nepali, because after all the help, the Sherpa are viewed as affluent.  

However all the locals revere Sir Ed with passion.  Except for one Sherpa fella we met who thought ol' Hillary funded the entire expedition, and needed Sherpa Tenzing as a guide ... How funny!   In fact the term Sherpa has been misunderstood by us, and it's nice to finally learn what it means.  Sherpas are an ethnic group, a fiercely proud bunch with Tibetan ancestry.  Locally, they regard and title themselves as Sherpa, not Nepali.  Google says there are currently about 150 000 Sherpa, and Sherpa literally means 'eastern people.'  The high Himalayas have become home to the people with rounded milk-chocolate faces, rich-ruby-red cheeks, and almond-shaped eyes.  Sherpa in early 1900's expeditions were hired as lackies and unskilled labourers.  As climbing 'gentlemen' realised the mountaineering and navigational skills of the Sherpa, they were seen as more instrumental in summiting bids.  From the time Tenzing so iconically stood on the roof of the world (the statue pictured above was created from Hillary's famous photo of June 1953), the Sherpa have became affectionately known as the tigers of the snow.  

The plaque below speaks beautifully of Tenzing, and worth a read.

Well, all this only gets us up to Namche Bazaar, and day 3.  Day 4 to day 7 of the trek were mostly up, mostly physically hard work, and mostly so beautiful it's difficult to retell or capture.  The days quickly found their rhythm... Wake up early (too early actually) in a freezing cold room, stuff our gear into our backpack for porter Chandra, try to mange down a breakfast of eggs and rock-textured toast, guzzle some liquid.  Next we'd be trundling outside, still half asleep, into the crisp mountain air.  The vistas around us would help our piggy eyes to awaken, and there'd be some oohs and ahhs, as we started trekking up.  Most days involved inclines, for a few hours at least.  Sometimes silently plodding along, sometimes chatting and singing.  Mostly overwhelmed at the gargantuan landscape that towered about us.  What an exceptional world we live in - glorious!  A stop for lunch, and another bit of legwork in the afternoon, then we'd arrive with tired smiles at the end of the day, warm up by adding a few layers, and order dinner.  Mostly on offer was dahl baat, curries, noodles, pizza or soup.  The vege egg curry was the best, but we craved fresh fruit and salad most days.  After dinner, we would order breakfast for the next day, and be in bed around 7pm. 

If you're looking for Everest in any of these photos, look for the grey triangular non-event, that if seen from the south, has a rocky 'skirt' of mountains underneath the summit.  The very beautiful Lhotse is seen to the right, and is a perfectly triangular looking colossus, with mostly grey rock on its southern slope.

It seems that every man and his yak are carrying something along the track, either ferrying goods up the Solukumbhu Valley, or returning.  The yak bells alert you from a few hundy meters away to find a good spot on the uphill slope, to tuck yourself in, before the dozen or so yaks amble past, hurried along by the yak herders hissing and cajoling.  

Human mules also crowd the path.  Short stooped over local men earn about 80 rupees (80 US cents) per kilo to lug their loads along the route.  Some guys are carrying 60 kilos.  Baskets like the one below are laden with everything you can imagine.  But mostly San Miguel.  Beer, for thirsty rupee-paying foreigners.  At first this smelt of exploitation of the poor locals, but on second thoughts it is providing much needed work for thousands of porters.  It makes sense that the prices of food and goods rise along with the elevation.  Literally every single thing is carried in on someone's back (and there's also the chopper option if you can choose to pay for it).

Halfway into our trek we came across a couple of porters with bulky loads escorted by several heavily armed militia.  We learned that employees in the mountains get paid monthly, and these guys' job was to haul in the cash!  Unfortunately for them, large denominations are no use round these parts, so their loads were comprised of wads and wads of small banknotes - no wonder they had bodyguards.

Our 6 or 7 kilo day packs were a breeze in comparison!   Although as our bodies paced up above the treeline, there was a massive difference in the air.  'Thinner' is a good adjective.  The air literally seems to disappear around you.  And higher up, where even the scrubby, mini-plants refused to grow, we noticed we couldn't suck enough air in.  Imagine the inhumane conditions 3 vertical km's higher on the top of Mt Ev.    

Our views were 360 degrees of stunning-ness!  The higher we walked, the more mountains showed off to us.  It seemed like the mountains were all quietly trying to outdo each other, with the sun dancing off different slopes throughout the day.  Deep blue skies highlighted the whiteness of the snow, interrupted by the aqua-blue of glaciers, and the dark-grey of the rock faces themselves.  

We slogged pretty hard for up to 9 hours a day, surrounded by other intrepid folks up to twice our age and with all levels of fitness. Without pretending that it was easy, the fact is that this is an eminently do-able trek for anyone who wants to get there bad enough. That is, unless the altitude gets you. Each day we saw several rescue helicopters (some flying in the valleys below us) evacuating people who had succomed to the potentially life-threatening symptoms of Acute Mountain Illness (AMI). At something like $1,800 USD for a medical evacuation, we were lucky to be relatively symptom-free.  Although we lost a lot of sleep most nights, and Blandy lost her lunch on the highest day, and we didn't have any appetite between around 4,500m and 5,500m, we were definitely among the lucky ones.

At Dingboche (night 6) we agreed to participate in a 48hour medical study. There were some doctors there researching something about the physiology of AMI based on the effectiveness of ibuprofen versus paracetamol. We were eligible because by that altitude we hadn't already taken anything for our (minor) symptoms.  We signed a paper, they gave us some unspecified pills, measured our oxygen levels before & after, & that was us. No more sore heads after that, so it was worthwhile.

Base Camp itself was a diminutive little affair tucked away on a colossal glacier at the foot of the Khumbu icefall.  With nothing to distinguish it from the enormity of the landscape but a ragtag of prayer flags, it's hard to believe this is the place from where legends have launched.

At 5364m above sea level, Old Everest Base Camp is a cold, isolated, and potentially fear-inducing place.  If you're looking for Everest, it's only a smidge visible from EBC, it's the little wedge poking out behind the right side of Nuptse Nup II (centre of photo).

We spent half an hour resting our weary bodies and soaking up the significance of our surrounds before turning to head for 'home'.  We couldn't imagine what it must have been like for those who once pitched their tents there and prepared to continue to the very pinnacle of the world. Nowadays, expeditions to Everest use a different Base Camp, at the same altitude, but another few kilometres around the way.

Our journey from Lukla (2880m) to EBC (5364m) took seven days,and is 62km-ish.  

The return journey (from EBC to Lukla) consisted of three very long days, heads down, legs trotting.  We celebrated with a mango juice and a vege curry!  After some hassles getting a flight back to Kathmandu, we eventually threw ourselves into the shower and scrubbed off ten days of dust and sweat ... So glad to be clean again!  The savaged sunburnt lips and the memories will last a bit longer though!

We've had a real hard time writing this blog post.  The majestic-ness and grandeur of the area is too magnificent for words.  The pictures look completely poor in contrast to reality.  Maybe, just maybe you should open a new window on your screen, book yourself some tickets, and explore the Himalayas for yourself.  You will be awed!