Arrival in Kathmandu
I flew from Melbourne to Nepal via Bangkok. The journey got off to a good start at Melbourne airport, Thai Airways served up lots of food and drink and 9 hours 30 minutes later we landed in Bangkok, where things went downhill a little. I followed the transfer signs to head for my outbound flight 4 hours later. Strangely, despite not leaving the secure area, all the transfer passengers had to go through security screening. The queue was so long that the waiting area on that level was full and we had to queue downstairs before being allowed up the escalator to queue again. Having gone through security I found that all the gates seemed to be served by just one small cafe. Moreover, the gate itself was closed until 40 minutes before the flight; in the meantime there was limited seating on a walkway overlooking the gate. I was fortunate to get a seat; others were not. When the time came, queuing inside the gate itself was a little chaotic, but we all got on board and took off on schedule.
We arrived over Kathmandu 3 hours and 30 minutes later, but had to circle for 45 minutes and then wait another 15 minutes on the tarmac before we were allocated a stand. Then I had to get a visa-on-arrival. First I had to queue to put my details in a machine which printed out a slip of paper. Then I had to queue to pay for the visa and then wait again until the only card machine was available. Then I had to queue at the actual immigration counter; it took me three tries before I got the right one. Eventually, after an hour of this I was through and able to go and find my luggage (since checked baggage was included on my flights to both Nepal and the UK, I had bought a cheap holdall in Australia to bring home as much of the camping equipment as would fit in). Bizarrely we had to queue to put our belongings through a scanner before entering the small, crowded and chaotic luggage hall. And still my bag had not arrived! Eventually and to my relief the bag appeared and I fought my way outside through the crowds to find that the taxi promised by the hotel was not there. Wary through experience of ‘helpful’ people at airports, I declined offers of assistance. A phone call and a genuinely helpful driver later and I was on my way into town.
After the calm, orderly and well mannered driving of Australia, I was back in the developing Asia every-man-for-himself and blow-the-horn-as-often-as-possible style of road rules. Much more exciting, not to say scary.
I checked into my hotel and soon discovered that builders are working across the way and next door itself is a building site where the speciality is hammering on pipes. Not exactly what you want when you have been up for 36 hours. I unlocked my room and found someone else’s things there. On enquiry it seems I had misread the number on my key and unlocked the wrong room. However, the key also unlocked my room! Concerned, I told reception, who informed me that the key only fitted 4 rooms, this was normal in Nepal and it wasn’t a problem. So that’s all right, then.
Of the 6 lights lights in my room and bathroom, 3 work. The bed is very hard. The power socket by the bed is so loose that adapters fall out of it, so my phone has to be charged on the floor by the door. It was only by obtaining an adapter from reception that I was able to avoid having to plug the kettle in at the same place; luckily, now I can plug it in conveniently at a point hidden at the back of a cupboard. There is no shower curtain so the entire bathroom floor gets wet and stays wet. The hot water takes 10 minutes to arrive. There is only a small shelf to put all my things. I was woken at 3.00 am by a noisy couple who banged doors and talked loudly for 20 minutes in the echoing hallway. Apart from these minor points the room is great.
The next morning… after pondering how much I liked my room, I decided to go elsewhere, found another hotel and moved in. And then moved to another room because the first was not quiet enough! Finally I found (relative) peace and quiet.
After getting my writing up to date I went to find the tour company office. I booked with them at the start of the year to trek for 15 days to Everest Base Camp (EBC) and Cho La Pass. While I believe it is fairly easy to find your own way, it seemed sensible at my advanced age and travelling alone to seek the support of a group when hiking for the first time in these somewhat high mountains. They provide a guide and a porter and also loan a down jacket, walking poles and a (hopefully warm) sleeping bag, as well as arranging the trekking permit and the return flights to Lukla, where the trek starts.
Chhatra, the company boss, was very professional and good at explaining what was going to happen. I collected a map, my flight tickets, jacket, poles and sleeping bag, as well as a duffle bag (actually what I would call a holdall) that the porter will use to carry my gear. Quite how he will carry it I do not understand; westerners have all manner of fancy backpacks with padded and adjustable shoulder and waist straps but this bag has no obvious easy way of being carried. We shall see.
I will be picked up from my hotel at 5.30 am on Saturday 28th to catch a 7.25 am flight to Lukla. Hopefully. It is quite common for weather conditions to cause cancellations and it has been rainy the last few days. On arrival in Lukla I will be met by my guide, who will recognise me because I will be wearing a company T-shirt. Then off we go, my guide, my porter and me – just the 3 of us; it seems I was the only person to book this trek, which is a shame as I was looking forward to being part of a group. Still, I am sure I will meet plenty of people on the paths and in the tea houses where we stay overnight. In the meantime I will just have to hope that my guide and porter are good company.
I spent the rest of the day buying snacks to eat on the trail, deodorant (showers will be a rarity as I get higher!), a second 1 litre water bottle and a second pair of hiking socks. There are lots of equipment shops in Thamel, the area of Kathmandu where I am staying. I was initially surprised by just how low the prices on the branded jackets and other goods were, but then twigged that they are knock-offs. The shop keepers are quite open about it when you ask them, assuring you they are good quality copies. They certainly look the business.
The Trek begins
28/09/19 Phakding 2610 m
Here I am in my first guest house 3 hours walk on the Everest trail. It was touch and go whether I would even get a flight to the start of the trek this morning. I awoke to an email telling me that my guide had been injured but another one had been assigned; hardly auspicious, but that was nothing to what awaited me at the airport.
Kathmandu has without any doubt the most disorganised, not to say chaotic, airport that I have ever experienced. Waiting at the airline check in desk, being ignored, asking and being told to use another airline’s desk, waiting, being ignored, asking and being told to come back later, coming back later to a crowd jostling in the absence of a queuing system, nobody moving forward except a big group that was dealt with immediately, asking and being told to wait, asking again and finally being checked in. That process took 1 hour 40 minutes. And then there was the departure gate: 4 flights shown above the gate, none of them mine and then suddenly the woman from the check in desk appeared and ushered me through and onto a bus with 14 others.
We boarded our plane, a twin otter if the writing on the prominently displayed first aid box was to be believed (why did it need to be so prominent? A little worrying!). It was the smallest plane I have been on since I made a parachute jump in New Zealand 45 years ago. No overhead lockers here, but there was a stewardess who offered us sweets and cotton wool ear plugs (the engines were a tad noisy); I asked her about the meal choice but she just smiled.
Before long we were in the clouds with occasional views of forested mountains, terraced clearings and scattered small villages. After 35 minutes we reached Lukla; the runway here has to be seen to be believed:
We landed safely; not all flights have in the past, and to remind us of this encouraging fact a wrecked helicopter is displayed next to the runway. The arrivals hall at the moment is a concete shell, not that it mattered, and with only 15 passengers retrieving luggage from the trolley was not an issue. My guide, Dendi Sherpa, spotted me and together with my porter, Namkha Sherpa, we went to a local hotel for a couple of hours to get organised and have some lunch. Namkha didn’t use the holdall; he transferred the contents to a backpack. Porters do carry these duffle bags though, two at a time, strapped together with a band around their forehead. That’s 20+ kg, and if that sounds tough, spare a thought for the men carrying general supplies up the mountains: we met one carrying 70kg and Dendi told me they carry up to a staggering 120kg!
Finally we were off, walking a rough, wet rock track along the hillsides in gentle rain. I haven’t seen any mountain tops yet but what I have seen is beautiful, very green countryside with the milky white Dudh Kushi river rushing below us. There are lots of trekkers on the trail, sharing it with laden donkeys and jopkes, a sort of small yak. Those who are on their way back have probably walked in rain for 2 weeks, poor sods. It is the end of the wet season; last year September was dry; this year it has been wet, but hopefully that will soon change. It would be nice to see a mountain or two while I am here. It wasn’t great weather for photos but I intend to make up for that once the sun comes out.
Our destination, Phakding (careful how you say that) was an easy 3 hour walk, a little uphill but more downhill. At our guesthouse I met up with a group of 6 trekking with the same company to EBC but not Cho La Pass. They should have taken a plane from Kathmandu yesterday but it was cancelled; worried that the same would happen today, they took a helicopter instead at a mere $2600 for 5 people. The weather came in and they did not even get to Lukla, having to make an emergency landing and then walk in driving rain and darkness for 30 minutes to find somewhere for the night They then had a 6 hour walk to get here today. I was lucky.
One of that group, Ray, a 60 year old American, is walking with a knee he damaged just a few days ago. He is signed up to actually climb Everest in 2 years time! The cost for that is $65,000, of which $11,000 is the permit. Apparently the oldest person to climb Everest was 80 years old! I am, once again, clearly a lightweight in the travel and adventure department.
That group weren’t the only ones to take a helicopter. An hour after dark a Maltese guy arrived with his guide/porter. He had been trying to get a flight for 4 days and finally took the helicopter option, but arrived so late in Lukla he could not complete the walk in daylight. I was even luckier than I realised.
My tea house looks quite smart from the outside but inside is pretty basic. The large dining room is heated by an iron stove in the middle of the room, but that is only lit after dark. There is no heating or hot water in my room, nor any electrical socket, and the power only comes on at 5.30 as darkness approaches. It goes off again long before dawn, as I found out when I awoke needing a pee and had to fumble around in the darkness to find my torch.
29/09/19 Namche Bazar 3440 m
After a night in which I woke frequently, despite being snug under two duvets, we breakfasted at 7.00 am and were on the trail just after 7.30 am, along with everyone else who had stayed in Phakding overnight. Consequently it got a littlle crowded at times, but the upside was that I bumped into familiar people several times during the day, offering mutual encouragement as we climbed up and down the rocky trails in the continuous gentle rain. Our route followed the Dudh Kushi most of the day, crossing it four times on spectacular wire suspension bridges. Sometimes we had to wait for pack animals to pass; Dendi made sure I was on the inside of the path – one unfortunate nudge from a passing donkey on the other side and you would take the fast route into the gorge way below.
The last couple of hours were all steeply uphill, so I was not sorry when 6 hours 30 minutes after our start we arrived at Namche, which at 3,440 m is 800 m higher than Phakding. My accommodation here has gone up a notch: obviously there is no heating in my room, but not only does it have lighting and a power socket permanently on, I am promised that shortly there will be hot water for a shower. Clearly I am in the lap of luxury, although it would be even better if they lit the fire in the dining room where I am writing this. It is very noticeably colder here and I am wearing not just my fleece but also the down jacket, so my body is warm but my fingers are wrinkled with cold. Hem, our destination in a few days time will be another 2000 m higher and significantly colder again…
30/09/19 Namche Bazar
Today was an altitude acclimatisation day. We stayed in the local area and climbed very steeply for 400 m to reach a view point. My legs and lungs both felt the climb rather more than they usually would and I was glad that we weren’t doing more. The ascent was well worth it though, as the skies cleared enough to give great views of mountains near and far; the only one we could not see was Everest, hidden in cloud.
At the top were 4 helicopters; sometimes they stop and wait here until conditions clear further up the Khumbu valley, or sometimes they just bring people straight here from Kathmandu to see the view. Cheats and skivers.
Back in the town we visited the Sherpa museum, including a typical traditional Sherpa house and an exhibition dedicated to Everest climbers.
Later in the afternoon I took myself off without my guide to find the post office. It was easier said than done as there seem to be no street names and the town map bore only a passing resemblance to what was actually on the ground. After a few false turns up and down the steep, narrow, rocky streets (no tarmac or cars here) I was able to post my card to Mum. Nearby was the monastery with its visitor centre giving information about the Nepalese version of Buddhism and the local festivals. There is only one monk in residence here, but every year 24 monks come from other monasteries to read the writings of the Buddha; it takes a week, but that is nothing compared to the readings that take place every 5 years when the monks read the 113 volumes of knowledge ; that takes a month.
I am again writing in the dining room, this time in the evening when the iron stove has warmed things up sufficiently to temporarily dispense with the down jacket. Naturally I still have the fleece on. Over dinner I talked to an Australian couple; they were due to fly to Lukla 2 hours after me but their flight was cancelled and with no flights yesterday they, too, had to get a helicopter. I was definitely lucky!
1/10/19 Pangboche 3930 m
I could see our destination from Namche this morning and it was clearly going to be a fairly level to gently uphill walk all the way. And so it was, a good path winding alongside a beautiful hillside, until everything went downhill. Steeply. At length. From being well above the river we were right down by it again; perhaps this was the only place for a bridge. We had lunch and then set off to climb the other side.
In the Alps I know I can climb indefinitely at a steady pace, and am proud enough that I don’t like it when people go past me. Here, at these altitudes, I have had to learn to walk more slowly and be more humble; even so, anything uphill is hard, and this hill took two hours of plodding forward.
At the top was the monastery of Tengboche where we could have stayed, but we pressed on to Pangboche. Imagine my delight when the track dived downhill so that we could recross the river yet again; of course, that meant more climbing on the other side, not so long this time, but I was quite tired by the time we reached Pangboche.
The accomodation is getting a little more basic. I still have my own room but no en-suite shower room; in fact there is no sign of a shower in the building, although there are rumours of one outside that isn’t working. Our sanitary facilities consist of a shared squat toilet and a western style toilet, both rather unpleasant, and one cold water tap – hygiene is important, after all. I am expecting that this is the best I am going to get for another week, so I had better enjoy it while I can.
On the plus side I have purchased a wifi pass that should work at all the tea houses we stay at until we get back to Namche, so I can stay in touch.
2/10/19 Dingboche 4410 m
An easy day today, if any walking here can be called easy, and it started wonderfully when I awoke at 6.50 and looked out the window at spectacular views in clear skies. Going outside I was treated to towering snow-clad peaks in all directions, including Mt Everest, although that quickly assumed a small cloud covering. I have seen mountains in the Alps and in the Rockies and I can inform you with confidence that the Himalayas are big, very big. The Austrian Alps have innumerable challenging walks and climbs, but this place is on another level.
After my breakfast of porridge and apple we set off on a gently rising trail, enjoying the mind-boggling views. Naturally, at one point we had to drop down a little to cross a small river and, naturally again, there was a steep climb on the other side. I am disciplining myself to walk slowly, conserving energy, and it felt like progress was very slow. Nevertheless, we reached our destination considerably faster than I was told to expect, so I suppose I must be doing ok. So far.
The weather, like the last couple of days, started clear and then clouded up, but it has stayed dry. The Cho La Pass, which we plan to cross after visiting Everest Base Camp, has been closed, but hopefully with improving weather will open again before we get there. Dendi has told me I will need crampons for this stage of the trek. I hadn’t realised that. Oh.
My accommodation here has exceeded my expectations: I have an en-suite bathroom. Well, to be more accurate, I have an en-suite toilet; flush with a can of water from a barrel and put toilet paper in the bin as normal. Washing facilities are in the front yard, consisting of a hose with a piece of wood in the end as a stopper. Again there are rumours of a hot shower somewhere, at extra cost of course, but my guide tells me that hot showers sometimes bring on altitude sickness, so I will give that luxury a miss for a week or so. And I won’t be having a cold one. I hope.
The wifi is working only intermittently well so far, and I will have to limit phone usage; apparently from here on it costs Rp 500 (about £3.50) an hour to charge. There is no power socket in the room, but I am still enjoying electric lighting. It takes a long time to load up photos to the blog so there may be fewer for a while. I shall have to see how it goes.
Getting higher
4/10/19 Dingboche 4410
Another acclimatisation day. This time a hard, steep climb of 500 to 700 m, depending on whose altimeter we believed. We are only half the height of Everest, yet any slight exertion makes me, and everyone else except the Sherpas, short of breath, so climbing a steep hill is a major challenge. The views at the top were worth it though.
The afternoon and evening were spent very socially in the dining room, first chatting to an Indian couple who plan to walk to base camp and get a helicopter back to Lukla, and then with Nathan, an Israeli guy I had met at Kathmandu airport, and a Dutch couple, Ted and Simone, who had also been on the plane to Lukla. Jokes flew aplenty, especially when we played a Dutch card game; I haven’t laughed so much in a long time; maybe it was the altitude, but it was as if we were all a little tipsy despite consuming no alcohol.
Ted has been having trouble adjusting to the altitude; he has a slight headache and nausea, early signs, and so he and Simone are taking extra time to acclimatise before tackling the Kongma La Pass. They, like Nathan, are travelling without a guide and carrying all their own gear. Rather them than me.
There is a group of 18 Greeks here. Three of them have altitude sickness, one of them with oxygen levels low enough to require a helicopter to take him lower quickly. Touch wood, I am ok so far.
At the end of the evening, from the relative comfort of the temporarily warm dining room (the wood burning stove is only lit late afternoon), it was time to go to my little, cold, damp room, arrange the duvet and get into bed; even that effort made me breathless.
5/10/19 Lobuche 5050 m
We moved on again today, starting with a climb out of the village and then level or very gently uphill for 2 hours, enjoying amazing views in clear skies. After an early lunch the hard work started: a climb up to Lobuche; it was not as steep as yesterday’s but felt harder until I eventually got my second wind and found a rhythm. I heard another guide instructing his group to ‘walk like a tortoise’ and that is exactly what you have to do.
On the way we saw several helicopters heading for the hospital at the little village of Pheriche, probably carrying people with altitude sickness.
We are actually staying at a tea house 30 minutes beyond Lobuche at the site of a pyramidal research station. For an extra Rp 1500 I have an inclusive deal here with power points in my room, so can charge my phone and power bank, and whatever food and drinks I want, as well as a hot shower. Dendi says I should be ok taking one so long as it is not too hot.
The research station was built and funded by the Italian government to monitor air and water quality and seismic activity. Unfortunately funding has stopped and just one person remains to keep an eye on it in hope that funding can resume.
I had my oxygen level and heart rate taken; at 82% and 80 bpm I am ‘excellent’, so that is encouraging: tomorrow we head up to base camp!
Rob's Roads 