Everest report

I'm now safely back in Kathmandu after our early morning flight today from Lukla, and I'm ensconced again at the Nepal Encounter. I'm feeling good, with the benefits of lower altitude and two weeks of hard exercise. Kathmandu has had some rain in the meantime and so the air here is a whole lot better than when we left. The sky is clear and it is a pleasant 28 degrees or so.

The trek itself was pretty hard work. We has no rest days but stayed over on a couple of occasions in the same place for acclimatisation reasons (going higher and then back to base). As indicated earlier the weather could have been better. At the start of the trek we were told that the region hadn't seen any rain or snow all winter, but that has certainly changed now. We never really got soaked, because the days usually started clear, changing to rain or (mostly) snow in mid-to-late afternoon. Overnight it was always freezing cold and I needed a blanket or two in addition to my sleeping bag.
My diet was about 50% dahl bhat, 25% garlic or noodle soup and 10% porridge. For anyone with a lingering garlic soup interest, up in that region they normally include the chopped "green garlic" shoots and use some different spices featuring e.g. coriander, turmeric. I'm sure it helped me fend off the many of the bad colds with which so many others seemed to be afflicted!

Of course we encountered some fantastic scenery all along our route, surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the world and passing through a complete range of terrain from pine and rhododendron forest to barren glaciers and moraine. Everest itself is pretty elusive, often largely hidden behind Lhotse. We had some good views of it from a distance but it was cloudy and started snowing when we were at Base Camp. Our ascent of Kala Patthar for early morning sunrise views was again rather spoiled by cloud - but it is still very impressive to see our biggest mountain and its glaciers looming through the mist!
I'll include a few photos, but I'm afraid they don't really do justice to the experience. As well as Everest, there are shots there of Lhotse, Nuptse, AmaDablam and Thamserku.






























I have no complaints about the lodges we stayed in. They are usually very basic in many ways, but always pretty sociable places, with people generally huddling around the central stoves burning (usually) dried yak-dung or (occasionally) wood!
I need to make special mention of some friends we made en route. Peter and Christina from Denmark - taking time off from a year of voluntary work in Bangladesh and sharing my view that it is most important to "teach the teachers" rather than just to come and act as stand-in teachers.
Jenny and Nikki from Devon and the rest of their team for the repeated friendly encounters and the "spoons" lessons. Reiner from Germany (chairman of a German/Nepali NGO) for his encouragement re the WDT. Arthur from Switzerland for his sense of fun, and for our work on developing our (long term) vision of Nepal as the "Switzerland of Asia". Wu Zheng for his advice on travels in China.

And I can't finish this piece without giving lots of credit to Dharma. For me, having a 1:1 guide was definitely the right choice for the trek, and Dharma did a great job in every respect. He was as helpful and informative as I could have wished. In case you want to use his services he can be reached at bmdharma@yahoo.com.
I look forward to taking up his invitation to meet his wife and family for dahl bhat at their house sometime in the next week or two.