Off to Lobuche

2nd January

Heading off from Dhingboche we walked back up the hill that KTP & I had ‘acclimatized’ with the day before – following the lay of the land over hills and small dips. The high altitude was most definitely starting to affect me as I found I quickly became very short of breath, despite my slow walking pace. Though in some ways my slowness came in hand as I spotted two thousand rupees that had been dropped along the path!! Being a kind soul I made sure no one else had dropped it before adding to the Team Nepal’s group fund… which was received with little gratitude :( (haha!) From where we were we could see down the valley below us and Raj pointed out that this would be the route we would be using to head home after Base Camp!

After crossing a frozen over river (by jumping from rock to rock) we made our way to our lunch teahouse. Lunch took forever to arrive (Nepali time!), however this tea house will forever be remember for the god-awful toilet!! A little tin shed off to the side… wooden wonky board over a LOOOONG DROP… and OMG THE SMELL!! I had my neck warmer over my nose and the roll of toilet paper and it was still horrible!!

After lunch we had to conquer a massive hill “straight up” to make our way up some 200 m to the Thokla Pass. For the majority of us the pace was slow going as we needed constant breaks to slow our racing heart or gather back some breath – however KTP zoomed up that hill like the devil was after her… and I think was about the 2^nd person up the hill!!

During the climb I chatted a little to one of our porters called Nema… and then confused him by mistaking his question of “first time” (in Nepal) for “past time?”… The whole f/p pronunciation thing confuses me!

Upon reaching the Thokla pass we rested for awhile and admired the memorials for those who had lost their lives on Everest. From memory, believe at least one person dies for every 5 – 6 people who reach the summit… though these numbers may come down now as those figures were after the 1996 distaster (where 11 people died in the one climbing season) – but as you can imagine there are quite a lot of memorials there.

The route flattened out after this and we touched the edge of the Khumble Glacier – a massive wall of rock and ice that reaches all the way to Everest Base Camp (& beyond). It was about at this point that Alicia unfortunately succumbed to the runs – making the rest of the way to Lobuche quite unpleasant for her :(

For most of the afternoon we followed the path of a frozen-over river – Mark & Torbs both testing the strength of the ice by hurling large stones at the river… none of the rocks broke the ice, so it was obviously nice and solid!! I hung out the back for the majority of the trek hanging out for KTP and Alicia (who had to make a few stops along the way!).

As we reached Lobuche, we came across poor Ash who was struggling with vertigo. It took her quite a few minutes to make it all the way to the tea house and she looked pretty worse for wear – obviously the high altitude (Lobuche is @ 4910 m) was starting to make it effects known!

Alicia didn’t even make it to the tea house before needing to stop – ducking behind a Porter’s rest house for another ‘rest’ stop… and when she did reach the teahouse she headed straight outside to the toilet only to come back a few minutes later with a sheepish look on her face and a short exclamation “Oh my God guys, I dropped my camera in the toilet!”

As you can imagine, we all just burst out laughing (no sympathy here!) as she told us how her camera had fallen out of her jacket pocket right down the LOOOONG DROP!

It was the guides/porters to the rescue as they successfully retrieved her camera… according to them it didn’t actually make it all the way down – instead falling on a piece of ice. I must admit it looked pretty clean – but we used a good dosage of hand sanitizer before we touched it again!!

Poor KTP had a massive migraine tonight which also made her feel pretty nauseous, which probably wasn’t helped with the entire place reeking like Yak Shit from the heater. She’s a bit hesitant about making the massive trek to Base Camp planned for tomorrow and even Raj said it’s not worth pushing yourself to Base Camp if you can’t as really it’s just “ice and rock”, at least you’ve made it to 5000 m above sea level… achievement enough! Either way, she’ll just have to wait to see how she feel tomorrow… BASE CAMP DAY!

Fang's reminiscence on January 14, 2010

Ok so far I have been told off that I have not added or contributed to the blog so I thought I would add a few thoughts to Brennan's efforts of our Nepal trip this far.

So currently I am sitting in Bandipur at probably the only internet cafe in the whole entire town. As you can gather it is not a very big town. I think we walked pretty much all through it in about 30 minutes but it is a very beautiful, quiet and quaint town with many beautiful people. We travelled for a good 2.5 to 3 hrs on a very interesting looking bus where I couldn't get my knees behind the seat in front. There were many many many bumpy parts on our journey from Chitwan to Dumre (town just outside of Bandipur). All we were really missing on this bus were some chickens and some goats. We arrived here at 1pm today at the back of a pick up truck. The interesting thing about this journey was probably the number of people that were on this truck. We are estimating that there were approximately 17 people that were crammed on top, inside and hanging on the outside of this truck. People were getting in and people were getting out. Have a wild guess where I was positioned on this truck.....that's right on the back, standing up, holding on for dear life....one to not die and to make a fool of myself as there were 2 Nepalese women that were laughing at me a good part of the way up to our destination. Standing at the back I really thought how in the hell did I end up here right NOW!

So officially we finished our Base Camp hike on January 8, 2010 where we flew out from Lukla. I would have to say that trekking on that path was probably one of the most difficult things that I have done physically to date. As some of you may have been reading Brennan's daily posts it has been quite the physical challenge that has been faced. Pushing the body to that challenge on a daily basis was very tough and to also combat altitude sickness made things interesting! To sit on your bed at 7am in the morning after your head has throbbed since 12am that night and to pack the entire contents of your bag, provided that it wasn't that much was something that was so hard to muster for our last stop before Base Camp! Nevertheless.....HFUP.......as I have been known to say to motivate myself!

After trekking for 6 hrs to Everest Base Camp after leaving Loubcher, I cannot describe the sense of satisfaction, achievement and calm that I felt when I reached the "destination". It was rocks after rocks that we had to walk over, some big some small but each one a challenge an obstacle that was overcome. To some if you saw the photos of Base Camp it doesn't look like much. Not fancy, not flash, definitely no neon flashing lights saying......Base Camp here! It is bascially surrounded by rocks and is a huge mound of rocks itself with prayer flags and momentos left behind from other trekkers and climbers but to me it was such a sense of accomplishment for 2009. After setting out and committing to this trip since an early early morning back in April. All the hard work, preperations and sweat paid off as soon as your foot touched that "sacred" spot. I don't think I will ever forget after clambering up the rocks, staggering across to the centre of Base Camp and Ashleigh running and hugging me screaming into my ear "we did it, we made it". I don't even think it registered at that time what she was saying. I was just standing there in awe of where I was and trying to breathe. Thinking back on it, all I can do is smile to myself. To many Base Camp is only the beginning, the start of their climb, to something bigger, harder and better, and I do feel that by reaching the location of Everest Base Camp that it was only the beginning but standing there that day I had climbed my Everest for this part of my life!

A Tale of Two Halves

30th December - 1st of January

After probably my best sleep so far of the trek I woke to discover that my poor roomie KTP had not been so lucky.... turns out she had to visit the bathroom multiple times for a bit of a vom vom. She really did not look well but decided to attempt to carry on none the less and so we started our journey towards Phortse.

Obviously after expelling all her previously eaten food KTP was feeling a little on the weak side so it was a pretty slow journey with Torbs joining us up the back as well. The trek itself was a 'Nepali flat', which means it was mainly flat with a few ups and downs... this was probably the most maintained track we've come across so far - and halfway along we came across a guy who had apparently done all of the work himself... through donations from tourists like ourselves - so I happily donated a few hundred rupees to his cause... (even thou I doubt he'd be able to do anymore work on the track based on his advanced age!!)

We eventually made it past all the prayer poles and stupas to our first rest stop - a small tea house kinda in the middle of nowhere. KTP pretty much looked like the walking dead at this point so it was quickly decided that both her and myself would spend the day her to allow her to recuperate before moving on any further.

Luckily for us the Intrepid itinerary diverts from the main Base Camp trail to Phortse, which means we could travel an easier route over the next few days to catch up with the crew in Dhingboche.

While Alicia was a bit conflicted, we encouraged her to stay with the rest of the group as she was the strongest out of us and two people would be much easier to manage than three. So after leaving us with a guide, Nara & a porter we bade farewell to the rest of the group & Alicia and put KTP straight to bed... AND while KTP slept... I pretty much read and lazed around in the sun... (for what happened to Alicia & the rest of the group... you'll just have to wait till she's bothered to blog about it.... possibly never!)

The next morning we both awoke to the fact that it had SNOWED overnight (something like 6 inches!)!!! In fact a small pile of snow had built up in our room's window still. After her day of rest KTP felt quite ready to continue on our journey so we headed out into the snow(and somehow resisted the urge to create snow angels!)

The morning walk to us down toward the river - and to be honest it was the most fun I've had so far. Neither of us could imagine a better place in the world to be at that moment! I managed to get KTP with a good snow fall a few times by just tapping the trees above us with Hesus 2.0 (my walking pole), but don't worry - karma paid me back as I stacked it big time into the snow! Our poor guide, Nara, seemed a lil under prepared for the snow as we had to stop a few times for him to remove the snow that had built up in his sneakers!!

Once down by the river we had a quick break for some tea before beginning to climb (OMG CLIMB) 400 m straight up to the Tengboche Monastery.... There's not much to say expect it was hard, we did it very slowly and we took LOTS of breaks... and that we made it up there... eventually.

We ate lunch at a teahouse just across from the monastery and meet a Sydney-girl, Marissa Ward, who by pure coincidence I share a few mutual friends with. She was actually 'snowed in' as her group was unable to head to their next destination as it was to unsafe for the porters to carry all their gear!!

After lunch we headed toward our final destination - Pangboche - by again heading back down to the river and then climbing back up agin (this happens WAY too often for my liking). The main 'exciting' event of this trip is me having to the whole 'crap in the woods' thing way too literally as I suffered from the 'runs'. We finally reached Pangboche (to my great relief) late in the afternoon - both KTP and I were so tired we actually had a nap before dinner... and then as soon as dinner was over headed back to bed.... though not before celebrating Sydney New Years (~7PM Nepal time) with a hands raised "HAPPY NEW YEAR".... oh yeah... we're party animals.

The next morning we woke up relatively early again to make on way to Dhingboche - where we would finally meet up with the rest of the crew. It was a relatively pleasant morning walk in the snow-covered hills and we passed a few people who wished us a 'Happy New Year.' We stopped to have morning tea in this teahouse that was basically in the middle of nowhere with snow-covered ground as far as the eye could see.

We reached Dhingboche just around lunch time - with both Raj and Kevin coming outside to meet us... we are both still sorely disappointed that Alicia did not come out and greet us with open arms!! She claims she was told that we would not arrive for another hour or so... thou we believe she just couldn't be bothered leaving her sunny position in the dining room :D

We did however enter the dinning room to a round of applause - which was both very nice and made us feel like we had been missed. Sitting back and having lunch with everyone again I think made both KTP and I aware of how much we had missed our social interactions with the rest of the group. We also were

Today was an aclimatization day for the group - so they spent the morning climbing some 300 m up o a Tibetan prayer pole on the hill behind the teahouse. In an attempt to make up for it, both KTP and I did our own aclimatization walk - though as we had already climbed some 500 m... we decided we would not go as far up as the group had.

First we made our way up to the stupa directly behind the teahouse - which was probably around about 100 m up, we then made our way to the right to where some prayer flags had been strung together to make it about 200 m. It only took us ~ 1 hour and as we made our way down the hill we ran into Torbs who had gone out searching for us so he could do some extra walking... next time Torbs!

Once inside the teahouse we found most of the group intensely playing Phase 10 (some sort of American card game similar to Gin Rummy) so KTP and I started playing Shithead (name of the game I swear) and we taught it to Raj... who then proceeded to kick our arses!

All in all a good day! Tomorrow - Loubche!!

Brennan (KTP & Fang)

To Namche & Beyond

28th - 29th of December

We were up relatively early again today for our trek to Namche Bazaar (3440 m) – the last real ‘BIG’ town on our trek. Didn’t really sleep very much – no major reason why – just kinda laid in my sleeping bag for most of the night. It was relatively cold – but not TOO bad, though I did wear my thermals to bed for the first time.

Apparently though, it can be quite difficult to sleep in high altitudes (we are currently only 2610 m above sea level… BUT it is a lot higher than what I’m normally used too!!) and you can also have extremely vivid dreams… thou I guess I’d have to actually get some sleep to experience that!!

The trek to Namche Bazaar was probably our first real ‘test’ for the trek. While we were walking only 9 km it took ~ 6 hours as we had to climb a long way up right at the end (known as a Nepali ‘straight up!’). The first few hours were a Nepali ‘flat’, which consisted of “little” ups and downs as we made our way along the Dudh Kosi River – actually crossing it by swing bridges 5 times!!
The swing bridges are kinda interesting to walk across – as quite often they seem to be swinging up as your foot is coming down and then you end up all out of sync… it just a little weird. You also have lots of obstacles to pass – yak caravans, porters carrying trekkers bags… or 80kg of glass using only their foreheads and backs(!!... it’s AMAZING!). At one stage I was walking along a bridge and I heard a rustling behind me and realized there was a guy, right on my tail, carrying 60 – 70kg of empty plastic water bottles on his back (it was these massive bags that were twice his height and twice as wide)!! I practically had to jog down the bridge to give him enough room… it felt very raiders of the lost ark!!

Just before lunch we entered to Sagarmatha National Park – Sagarmatha is the Nepali name for Everest – and finally saw our first glance of EVEREST in a small clearing as we started making our way up (UP UP!) to Namche Bazaar. While the ‘overall’ altitude gain between Phaking and Namche is ~800 m, because we have to go down to floor of the valleys to cross the river we probably climbed up much further (someone we met along the way suggested it was a climb closer to 1500 m!) Either way it was a LOOOONG way up and took 2 – 3 hours to complete. KTP & I firmly planted ourselves as the tortoises of the group (everyone else seems to be moving VERY quickly)… but we are not that much slower really… and we get to hang out the back with Raj, who has been able to answer all our stupid questions.

Our first sight of Namche was definitely a sight for sore eyes – it’s a bit like a big alpine town… though it’s slightly unusual in that it seems have multiple levels… its quite hard to describe actually… but when I finally post photos you’ll understand… but there’s probably like another 200 m in altitude gain from the bottom entrance of the town to the top – and about 6 – 7 levels of buildings between the two.

As we climbed up to our teahouse we passed the Tibetan markets, which is filled with Tibetan refugees who have escaped from Tibet with goods (like shoes, pants, etc.) to sell. They all live in these flimsy tents made out of tarpaulin, despite the fact it is freezing here! It’s quite sad actually.

We did eventually make it to our teahouse, tired and weary, and had a nice hot meal and a relatively early evening… despite the fact we had a bit of a sleep in the next morning as we were staying on in Namche for one more night to help acclimatize.

Acclimatization day was relatively peaceful – we spent the morning walking up to higher altitudes and then returned for the afternoon to rest and relax and then sleep.

We first walked up to visit a local museum, which despite Raj describing as ‘not very interesting’, wasn’t too bad. It had lots of information about the National Park and the surrounding fauna and flora, as well as info on the Sherpa culture and some of the programs Hillary had set up. We probably spent 20 – 30 minutes up there, as there were also great views of the mountains from there as well. Even more interesting were the military exercises happening right next to us at the army barracks!!

After seeing the museum, we headed back down to head straight back up again to the highest airport IN THE WORLD…. From memory I think it’s around 3750 m above sea level… on a mountain… and is funnily enough called ‘Mountain’!! While there is still a runway there, planes are no longer allowed to land there as there have been too many accidents, and the airport is now only being used by helicopters.

After a MASSIVE lunch we spent most of the afternoon exploring the town (not that interesting really…) and picking up a few essentials including our new walking poles (named Moses 2.0 (A), Hesus 2.0 (S) & pole (K)) which I think will be quite handy.

Another earlish nigh as we head off again tomorrow to Phortse Gaon (a random Sherpa village).

Brennan (KTP & Alicia)

The start of the trek….

25th -27th of December

Christmas night we headed out to try and find the Nepali Chulo restaurant following the minute instruction printed on our business cards… however we luckily ran into “our friend” Barga who out the front of the Northfield Café and he offered to give us a lift. Like most Nepali’s he drove a small car, as larger cars make it virtually impossible to maneuver around the small narrow streets especially in Thamel, and we managed to make it there incident free.

The Nepali Chulo restaurant is housed in a 900 year old Rana palace. The exterior and interior of the place has been lovingly restored and is just amazing. Walking in, we had to remove our shoes and we had another red dot placed upon our foreheads (for free this time) before making our way to sit at our traditional table (aka on the floor).

We started off with a few serves of Nepali rice wine, which I must say really warms up the body VERY QUICKLY… they have this unique way of pouring from a tea pot like vessel. Starting low in the clay cup and then quickly going higher before flicking their wrists to stop the flow at just the right moment… before the cup overflows. As the Nepali rice wine came quick and often & were being intermingled with some sort of run type cocktail it wasn’t very long till we were a very merry group… which would explain why Alicia and myself had a good go at the traditional Tibetan dancing… needless to say we weren’t very good – but it was all in good fun. The food was traditional Nepali and was very good… especially as we had multiple servings of momos(!!) which we all currently LOVE!!!

Anyways, after a lovely evening we returned back to our hotel thanks to Barga… who kinda made a move on Alicia and was quickly rejected… (Alicia: Not even while I was drunk! EW!)… so I think that’ll be the last we see of him (Alicia: hopefully!)

Boxing day was a pretty quiet affair – we met up with our trekking group for the first time. While there are 12 of us on the trip only 10 of us were there for the initial briefing (the other 2 were unfortunately stranded in China for a 70 hour layover!!) The briefing was pretty standard and we met our group leader Raj as well. Afterwards we headed to the Kathmandu Environmental Education Program (or K.E.E.P.) – which ended up being a bit of a bust as the guy who normally ran it was sick… so we pretty much just watched on what they do instead. We decided to go out for dinner with Raj and most of the group that evening and headed to the K-too Steakhouse, which wasn’t too bad from memory & it was here we met the last two members of the group… leaving us with:

• Peter, Mandy, Torbs & Joel from SA/ACT
• Amy & Mark from BrisVegas
• Ash from Sydney (who is friends with one of Alicia’s good friend’s Jess… small world!)
• Kevin & Kasia (the token Americans)
• & of course… Me, Alicia & KTP

It was an early night as we had to be up and ready to go by 6:30am(!!) for our 7:45am flight to Lukla. After arriving @ the domestic airport and heading through the ‘highly sophisticated’ *cough cough* security measures we ended up having to waiting for 4 hours(!!) for our flight as we were fogged in.
A variety of measures were undertaken to alleviate the boredom & it gave us all a good chance to finally meet and get to know the rest of the group – especially as we were about every moment of the next two weeks together!!

Eventually we were given the all the clear to leave and we headed via bus to our lil Yeti Airlines twin otter plane to Lukla. We had one flight attendant, whose main job is to close the door and had out Carmel candy and cotton wool (for earplugs!!) at the beginning of the flight! We were told we should get fantastic views of the Himalayas from one side… but no one would tell us which side it was!! Katie and I had the single seats on the left (underneath the wing)… and as we finally broke through the clouds it was obvious we had chosen the ‘right’ side and the majesty of the Himalayas was clearly apparent. As you can imagine the flashes started going off straight away and I have some gorgeous pictures (which I swear I will post eventually).

The entire plane trip was a lil nerve wrecking at part – especially as you get closer to Lukla as there are some very small passages that have to be negotiated… and the runway @ Lukla is crazily short (200 m… maybe?) on the side of a FRIGGIN MOUNTAIN!!! Apparently you have to have at least 7 – 8 years experience before you are allowed to land plane there… which is definitely a good thing!!
After alighting from the plane we quickly made our way to a tea house for lunch (which took an hour or two to arrive) before finally setting off on the start of our trek.

The first day was a ‘gentle introduction’ of 3 hours to Phakding (pronounced Fakding). It wasn’t too bad… but I’m pretty sure that was because it was mainly downhill!! The tea house we are staying in had small little separate rooms (with our own toilets… luxury!) made out of plywood boards… it’s cold but not too bad so far. Dinner wasn’t too bad either – so…. So far so good! Tomorrow will definitely be a different matter as we change elevation by over 800m to Namche Bazzar… Man that’s a lot of climbing!! Fun!

Brennan (Alicia & KTP)