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In October I shall be travelling to Nepal to trek to the Everest Base Camp at about 17500 feet.

The trek starts at the mountain airstrip of Lukla at just over 9000 feet. The airstrip was established by the late Sir Edmund Hilary and is now known as Tensing/Hilary Airport.

The itinerary takes in the ascent of Kalar Pattar, a "hill" of 18500 feet, in the shadow of Everest itself.

The trek is about thirty miles each way and takes about fourteen days. 

Some of my good friends have been affected by Lymphoma and so I have decided to utilise my trip to Nepal as a means of raising some funds for the Lymphoma Association which does such valuable work in supporting Lymphoma patients and their families.

5th November

The trip to Nepal was a tremendous success. I’d met up with some of my fellow trekkers in Doha, Qatar. They had flown from Heathrow whilst I had journeyed from Manchester. However we were all on the same flight from Doha to Kathmandu where we arrived at about 5pm. We were met in a traditional Nepalese manner with a greeting of “Namaste” which means “I salute the god within you” and had garlands of marigolds placed around our necks.

 

We spent the first two nights in the Malla Hotel in Kathmandu where we enjoyed a time of luxury before setting out on the trek and were greeted with yet more renditions of “Namaste” which always seems to come from the heart. A smartly dressed doorman threw everyone a smart salute, of which any sergeant major would have been proud! Our luggage was brought and assigned to bellboys to be taken to our respective rooms. The Malla is a comfortable hotel and exudes an air of (slightly faded) colonialism.

 

Two days later we returned to Kathmandu Airport where we boarded our flight to the mountain airstrip of Lukla where we arrived in the early afternoon. After lunch we set of with our trekking crew for the three hour walk to Phakding where we spent our first night under can

Next day saw us really starting to climb, gaining over 2500feet to finish at Namche Bazaar at 11300feet. To allow for acclimatization we spent two nights at Namche before pushing on to Thyangboche, the site of an important Buddhist monastery

Soon after leaving Namche we rounded a bend in the path and Amrit our sirdar stopped us and pointed eastwards. “Everest” he announced – and there it was! Most, if not all of us, found it to be quite an emotional moment, our first view of the highest mountain on earth. My own thoughts were that we were so privileged to be seeing the same view that the likes of Sir Edmund Hillary had seen for the first time nearly sixty years earlier.

 

From then on the mountain views only got better and the weather remained kind to us with clear blue skies every day.

 

Our next staging post and acclimatization stop was the village of Pheriche. At Pheriche there is a hospital manned by volunteer doctors who specialize in altitude related problems but also provide valuable medical resources for local people. Trekkers and climbers are strongly advised not to proceed beyond Pheriche if they experience any symptoms which might suggest altitude sickness.          

Two days later we were heading for Lobuche and thence to Gorak Shep which is the last village before Base Camp.

 It was from Gorak Shep – the coldest place I have ever visited- that we commenced our ascent of Kala Pattar. At 18500 feet this really was the high point of our trek. We set out at 7 o’clock on a bitterly cold but beautifully clear morning. Three hours later we were all on the summit congratulating each other to the accompaniment of much back “patting” despite our enforced breathlessness.  

After another cold night in the lodge at Gorak Shep it was five days of “Downhill all the way” back to Lukla and eventually a welcome shower and comfortable bed in Kathmandu.

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