Everest Base Camp - Day 1 (The pain begins...)

At last, the days of futility came to an end. We showed up to the airport for the THIRD day, and success! It was simple as just hopping on the the 20 passenger prop plane and we were off...

It's one of those things – after so many delays, I didn't really believe that we were actually going until the plane was in the air.

The other thing is that for all of the waiting and time wasted, the actual flight was only about 30 minutes... barely enought time for a quick take-off, a cruise over a few (relatively) small mountain ranges, and all of a sudden, we were landing. (The stewardess had the cushiest job ever - just pass out some candies, and sit down. She didn't even bother with the safety demonstration... I think it's understood that any plane 'issues' are pretty much non-survivable.)

It was probably for the best actually – like I mentioned before, the landing strip was really high, crazy short, and just to make things even more interesting... actually sloped uphill to allow planes to deccelerate in time. Ignorance is bliss – no “we'll be landing in five minutes” announcements, just a quick jolt and we were on the ground.

Whew.




Now that we actually arrived in Lukla, it was time to hit the trail. The plan was to spend 16 days heading up from 2800m to a Gyoko peak at 5300m, crossing over a high pass, and further up to Everest Base Camp and another peak called Kala Patthar at 18,100 feet.

A cool guy I met up with towards the end told us that the trek comes to about 130 kilometers / 80 miles. That was bad enough - but then he mentioned that "oh, yeah - and in total, on the way up and back, you'll have walked a combined elevation gain of 22,000 feet up and 22,000 feet down." Ow, ow, ow.


'course, that was the 'plan'... as we quickly discovered, the weather in the Himalayas has its own mind, and flexibility is key!

Okay – back to the trail... our intrepid wee party consisted of Dawa, our Sherpa guide Dawa (for pub trivia purposes, Sherpa is a combination of “Sher” for 'east' and “pa” for 'people'... cool, huh?), a porter named Pemba, myself, and a British couple named Kristin and David.

I was a little disappointed in only having one porter, instead of the two promised – because that meant Pemba, a guy who might be 130lbs dripping wet, had to carry all three of our big packs at about 70lbs all told. Insane.


And, the insane thing is that he was able to do this no sweat. Well, with lots of sweat, but it didn't seem to be that big of a deal for Pemba – up and down steep hills, he was always ahead of us, even though we fully REI kitted tourists were only carrying a very generous estimation of 15lbs each tops. Humbling. Very humbling.

The only saving grace was that we were doing a 'teahouse trek', staying each day at a basic lodge, so there wasn't any need for tents, stoves, or the like. I'm sure Pemba appreciated!

The first day was pretty cool – we took the winding path up out of Lukla, and were treated to a few hours of steep green hillsides with river rapids as the bottom of the valley. Add in villages, mani (prayer stones), and the odd yak, and it was gorgeous – and we hadn't even seen the snowy mountains we'd come all this way to see.


Now, you semi-geeky civil engineers out there (cough, cough... that's you, Dave) would appreciate all of the effort that went into making this durable trail. Part tourist attraction and part highway for the locals, this trail serves as a highway that connects all the hill towns within a 100 mile range of Lukla. From hordes of tourists, to packs of porters carrying trade goods, even including convoys of zopkios (yak/cow crosses) – the trail has to deal with a lot.

Coping with such steep terrain requires more than a bit of adapting... and no where was this more evident than with the Nepalese fascination with cable bridges:


These are relatively recent, and replaced the much more fragile wooden ones that you could see much lower down, smashed and abandoned on the rocks below. All I could say is thank whomever for good ol' fashioned steel – I would have been a nervous wreck (manly, stoic, and by no means whimpering on the outside mind you!) crossing the old school version.

We timed our tea break to perfection – ducking into one of the many restaurants along the way, we just avoided a serious rainstorm. That was good.

The bad news is that we were greeted with our own verbal storm, when we met up with a seriously over-talkative fellow Yank. In less than 10 minutes, we all learned that he broke off his engagement to go travelling when he saw a backpack on sale, reflected in the jewelery shop window where he was checking out wedding rings, plus a rapid-fire list of all the countries he visited in his 17 month trip.

Sigh. (Note to my future fellow travellers... if I ever come off this tedious, please beat me soundly about the head and shoulders. Thank you.)

Lunch brought its own share of drama, as we were relaxing in a comfy restaurant enjoying yet another meal of mo-mo's. All of a sudden, there was a whole bunch of shouting and yelling (say, is there a difference?) by our hostess.

Normally calm and good-natured, the Nepalese don't lose their temper often – this was a local equivalent of the Jerry Springer show, complete with finger pointing and all sorts of histrionics. (Hm. Do I get bonus points for this SAT word?)

The language escaped us, so naturally, we had to ask Dawa about the reason for the tiff. Alas, it wasn't over something we'd find on our talk shows along the lines of “you slept with my husband/brother”... nope, it had to do with something more fundamental – certain villagers were stealing power from the others.

On the plus side during all of this – I got to play with a local puppy who was undaunted by all of the loud voices:


Right – the rest of the day was pretty chilled out, as we arrived at our first lodge around mid-afternoon. So, like all good trekkers, we scored a cold beer and some munchies, then napped until dinner.