Welcome to
our travel blog – we’ll try and keep this updated with what we’re up to whilst
we’re away rather than bombarding everyone with long emails!
So it’s
been three weeks now since we packed up our lives in Sheffield into two small
backpacks and made our escape on a flight out of Heathrow terminal 5.
We arrived
sleep deprived at Delhi at 6.30am local time on Friday 18th May and
hung around Delhi airport for a connecting flight to Kathmandu, Nepal.
Fresh out
of airport arrivals, we were mobbed with offers for a taxi but luckily we had
arranged for an airport transfer with our hostel. The expected culture shock
set in on the taxi ride back into central Kathmandu - crazy busy dirty roads,
free-for-all traffic, rubbish and also cows, dogs and monkeys everywhere! The same
day as arriving we booked our flights to Lukla from where we would start our
trek to Everest Base Camp.
On our
first trip out in the city, we both picked up fake North Face jackets for the
trek, got caught in our first rain downpour – this was some serious rain, and went
for some dodgy food in a dark restaurant during a power cut which are very frequent
in Nepal.
After
staying up late sorting out our trekking gear, we got up at 4am to get a taxi
back to the airport for our flight to Lukla. This was an exciting 45 minute
flight on a tiny 14-seater propeller plane (that looked like a Citroen berlingo
van with wings) flying over increasingly hilly and then mountainous landscape
covered with small villages and layered fields.
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| Berlingo van with wings
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We landed on the scarily short inclined
runway at Lukla and started our trek with a 2-hour walk from Lukla (2840m) mostly
downhill to Phakding (2610m). En-route we first encountered several yak trains
and lots of Sherpa porters carrying insane amounts of cargo up the mountain on
their foreheads!
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| View of Lukla from the airport |
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| Lukla's tiny airport and runway |
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Lukla
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| Start of Everest Base Camp trek at Lukla |
We set off early the next morning on a long uphill hike to Namche Bazar (3440m). The view got more and more spectacular as we gained altitude fast, passing through lots of small villages and crossing rivers on high wobbly steel suspension bridges. We also got our first glimpse of Everest.
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| One of many steel suspension bridges |
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| Villages built into the mountainside |
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| Our cozy plywood room! |
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| Nepali dishes of Dahl Baht an Mo Mo's |
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| First glimpse of Everest! |
We took the recommended ‘rest day’ in Namche the following day (Tues 22nd) to help with altitude acclimatisation. We didn’t really rest though – instead we took a 4-hour hike around the less touristy Sherpa villages to the North of Namche – Zorak, Shyangboche, Kunde, Khumjung, Chhorkung.
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| Panoramic across Namche valley |
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Looking down into Namche
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Fellow trekkers
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We set off early again the next day from Namche to Tengboche (3860m) which is situated in a saddle on a high ridge with phenomenal views over towards Everest, Lotse, Ama Dablam and other huge peaks. More importantly, Tengboche had a well advertised bakery which we went to as soon as we arrived! We then went along to a highly decorated monastery to watch four Buddhist monks chant prayers and sip tea in the presence of about 30 western tourists observing in silence.
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| Life-saving Bakery in Tengboche |
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| Tengboche Monastery |
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| Inside Tengboche Monastery |
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Sherpa's carry up to 120kg each!
We've seen them carrying washing machines, wardrobes and amps
in their baskets that they balance on their foreheads. |
We set off a little later than previous days onwards to Pheriche (4240m). Our trip took us via Pangboche and Syomare and another steep 2 hour uphill section over the Pheriche Pass and then down a steady slope into Pheriche. We shared most of the last half of the walk with a Nepali girl who seemed to like walking with us but couldn’t speak any English – a little strange!
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Amazing views of Ama Dablam on the way up
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Yakidy yak
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Best tip we were given - always stay on the mountain side of the Yak train!
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| Pheriche Valley |
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| Pheriche Valley |
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| Glacial River |
We felt ok the next day so decided not to take the recommended acclimatisation day in Pheriche but continued on 2 hour’s walk through a huge valley and over a glacial stream up to Dughla (4620m). There was only one place to stay here and it smelled like wee. We shared our stay with two (independent) Canadian couples Daryl & Angela and Emily & Aaron and ended up playing silly card games all afternoon and evening with these guys and a couple of Nepali guides/porters.
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| Playing 'spoons' |
We didn’t rush to leave early but continued on up another couple of hours steeply (to start with) to Lebuche (4910m). We arrived early afternoon and shared our lodge with quite a few others we had already met along the way including two Irish guys and Canadians.
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| Valley up to Lobuche |
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| Lobuche |
The next day (Sunday 27th) we set off for Gorak Shep (5140m), the highest village in the Everest region.
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| Gorak Shep (5140m) - highest village in the Everest region |
At 5am the next day, we set off on the steep walk up to the top of Kala Pattar (5545m) from where you get the best 360 degree views of the Everest range. We stayed at the top for most of the rest of the morning taking photos of the amazing views with several others we’d met on previous days along the trek.
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| Base Camp from Kala Patthar - you can just make out the orange tents! |
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| Everest baby! |
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| Everest and Prayer Flags |
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Everest (top left) and looking down ascent to Kala Patthar
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| Everest (dark peak) and Nuptse (right) |
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| Very tame birds at the top of Kala Patthar |
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| View from the very (small) peak of Kala Patthar |
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With our Nepali friends at the top
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| We made it!! |
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| Taking a well deserved nap at the top! |
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| On the way down from Kala Patthar |
Having done Kala Pattar, we decided to try and make it back down to Namche for the last day of Namche festival instead of going to Base Camp itself which would have required another day of trekking. We walked down that afternoon all the way back to Pheriche, walking the distance of 3 days of uphill trekking in one long afternoon. The cloud really came in on the way down so we hardly saw any of the views that were visible on the way up. By the time we got to Pheriche we were in complete fog.
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| Foggy Pheriche! |
Mon 29th was another long day as we continued on down to Namche while cheering on marathon runners participating in the Everest Marathon which was on the same day (from Base Camp to Namche). We got to Namche not long before dark for the last day of the Namche Festival and partied into the night with some locals and marathon runners.
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With Nepali marathon runner 'Pemba'
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The next day there was some panic about delays for flights out of Lukla due to bad weather and a backlog of people trying to get out. Some people were arranging helicopters out from Namche to avoid the rumoured chaos in Lukla but we decided to continue down to see what we would find rather than pay for an expensive helicopter ride. We got down to Monjo that night – about half way back to Lukla.
When we got to Lukla on the 31st May, we learned that people had been stuck there for a few days already because clouds had prohibited any flights coming in. We went to a bar called The Wave that night and got pretty drunk with many other people also stuck in Lukla.
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| Arriving at Lukla after 11 days trekking |
Due to the bad weather and no flights, we were then stuck in Lukla until Sunday 3rd when a friendly local guide helped us buy another ticket for a different airline that was more likely to fly us out of there. We stayed in a lodge where quite a few other people we had got to know on the trek were staying and ended up playing lots of card games and watching a lot of TV. Most people flew out on the same day as us during a break in the bad weather and there was quite an atmosphere at the tiny airport, with people cheering every time a plane landed - ours was the last flight that day before the cloud rolled in again so we were lucky to get out!
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| With the lodge owner from Lobuche |
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With some of the Marathon runners
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| Clutching our 'lucky' plane tickets that finally got us all out of Lukla |
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| Pleased to be on a plane out of there at last! |
Overall we think we trekked about a 75 mile round trip gaining nearly 2 miles in altitude from Lukla to Kala Pattar in 11 days of walking.
We’re now in Kathmandu organising our next couple of weeks in Nepal!
