Namaste
Sleeping in Lobuche was horrendous! I regularly woke up gasping for air. It’s as though your body doesn’t realise that the Oxygen in the air is only at 60% of what it usually is at. Therefore, your lungs continue to ventilate at their usual rate until suddenly your body realises it’s deprived of oxygen and suddenly you’re hyperventilating to make up the oxygen that your body has been lacking. Still, it wasn’t worth focusing on too much, since it was only going to get worse!
Day 9 saw us wake really early, with 10 hours of trekking ahead of us. Firstly we stopped at Gorakshep for a late breakfast. Gorakshep is where we would be spending the next night at an altitude of 5180 metres (Officially, we were now at extreme high altitude). We all finished our food rather quickly in excitement for our next stop: Everest Base Camp!
The trek to Base Camp was pretty exciting. We were walking along the Khumbu glacier with some marvellous views of Mount Pumori, Lhotse and Nuptse. By now, everything around was snow capped and the true winter wonderland that I had originally envisioned when arriving in Nepal. At one stage we reached a peak height of 5550 metres above sea level, before arriving at Base Camp (5364 metres) completely exhausted. To be truthful, Base Camp itself was kind of underwhelming. There was one rock where someone had written ‘Everest Base Camp 5364m.’ I guess we’d all expected to see tents and radio towers and excitement like you get in the movies and documentaries. But we had to accept that it was January and no one in their right mind climbs Everest this time of year. The weather conditions are far too hostile. Most climbers wait until April or May. Despite this anticlimax, the feeling of reaching base camp was everything but underwhelming and we all rejoiced together over our achievement and took many photos.
That afternoon, we trekked back to Gorakshep where we spent the night, definitely the worst night’s sleep of my life!
More soon!
Much love!
Sam
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