Back on solid ground

So we're back on solid ground after flying back from Lukla to Katmandu. The two or three days' of tummy trouble didn't get us down too much and we kept putting one foot in front of the other. Amazing what the body is capable of...




Now it's back to solid food - no porridge ever again!. Said goodbye to the sherpas this morning, who presented us with some special silk scarves (kadahs). Sad but moving - really great people, and a fantastic country.

Made it!

We made it! All 18 of us despite the headaches and funny tummies. The day started at 5.30 and all of us made it back together safely if slightly knackered. We all feel very proud. The altitude - 5364 m and boy did you feel it at times.

Tonight we'll rest, and tomorrow get some great views over Everest - photos to follow. The connection here at Gorak Shep is slightly rudimentary, but the guy who owns it is certainly an entrepreneur - the highest connection I've used.

More to follow as we descend tomorrow!!

At Dingboche

This is truly magical. After several days trek past spectacular scenery, mountains ahead, the land has opened out and we are surrounded by frosted peaks - this is really the Himalayas as you see in pictures. There are seven or eight majestic summits around our teahouse. Last night a few of us wandered up the slopes and saw the whole thing swathed in rose with the sun setting. Am Dablam rises up right ahead of where we are staying, and the moon was 3/4 full over it last night.

This is a place that makes you feel glad you're alive and you get a sense that anything's possible. Maybe why further up, they say, there are so many cairns to the memory of those who believed that too.

We went for a walk this morning to test the altitude (4760 m) and experience the peace, with the flags strung across the path here and there. It's the highest I've been yet and I think it's a truly original landscape. I'm in good company to appreciate it - lots of cheery Irish and the same goes for the ever patient sherpas. They're ever watchful - only two of us have had to go into the decompression chamber so far. Two days to go - on Saturday we get to Base Camp. It's 9-10 hours walking, and hopefully we'll all be fit enough to make it.

Prayer bridge

We've seen the most fantastic bridges, in iron, on the way here. They stretch across gulfs that plunge down towards a river - the Milky River, so called because of the white froth and the glacial blue colour. They're often decked with prayer flags, a cheerful sight. The bridges are commissioned by something like the "the Royal Bridge Company", which was inaugurated apparently by the Swiss years ago. Well, they know something about mountains too.

It's been a great day again. We climbed up to the Everest View cafe, an apparently unprofitable locale built by the Japanese - the plane crashes didn't help. It's been a great way to spend a birthday and my companions have presented me with different Nepalese nick-nacks, prayer wheels, beads and the like. Roll on my 22nd :-).

Route to Namche Bazaar

We've spent the last few days trekking up to Namche Bazaar. Scenery is superb; the sherpas friendly and attentive. Our guide was born at 4000m, he tells us. So he's used to the altitude and is attentive to our lowland constitutions. No booze, no meat, slow trekking, and rest in the evening. The group is a bunch of lively Irish. There is one pretty visually challenged person in the group, but he's managing - it's a great achievement. Larks in the evening and it's joke-a-minute. Tomorrow we get a rest, but the next day the trekking gets longer and colder. Good feedback from all we cross on their way down. Weather is fantastic - sunny and clear. :-)

A week to go

A week to go, and starting to get excited. Ran a half marathon the other week - picture to follow(!) Lots of moral support from friends, family, colleagues and friends of friends has helped the fundraising. A major music event in Dundee by family and friends will raise even more. on Friday So may have beaten the orignal £4.5k target by at least 100%. More news tomorrow on that.

Come on ... !

We're organising a sporty get-together in August at Muir Cottage in Braemar.

Should be fun. See here.

The awesomeness of big

Comments I've had this week ... "Well, I've seen Everest once, from a distance. I was pretty glad it was from a distance."

"Everest is so big, it fills the whole skyline. It's just enormous". But it's all relative ... , isn't it?

And another one I found on a blog, not to do with big, but c-c-c-cold ... "Getting up at 5am to get up there in the freezing cold (our water packs froze) wasn't much fun though ..."

Better to cross those sorts of bridges when you come to them, methinks.

Getting creative...

Jo and I did a bit of desperate brainstorming at the outset. How can you beg, borrow, steal to reach the £4.5k? Ideas range from selling off bits of furniture (and/or people) we don't like, ceilidhs, giving Swahili lessons, hand-knitting baby booties, getting someone else to make angel cakes.... I think we've narrowed it down.

Watch this space - well especially Jo's space since she's got the good ideas and isn't full of hot air. Ceilidh, sponsored sports, kids corner at the highland games, selling off certain people (nah, just a joke), ebaying stuff, cool online advertising, cordon bleu cookery, teaching, organisation sponsorship and generous offers from others to do collections. All brainwaves gratefully received.

In times of crisis

So how are the two main crises of recent times affecting Everest? Well the first, climate change, is having pretty much the same effect as elsewhere in the Himalayas. Melting glaciers with glacial lakes so swollen they threaten to burst their banks, flooding further downhill, bridges and houses of locals washed away - all this has been plain to the sherpa population and it's accelerating.

And the global financial crisis - has it affected tourism? Not so apparently, at least not yet. 27,000 people disembark in and around Everest annually, compared to only 3,000 local sherpas. Aherm...we'll leave the ecological effects of this to another posting.

Crowded up there

I decided to forget about the 4 and half big ones for the moment. Worst comes to the worst I can always sell my flat. Instead I've been on a virtual tour of Big-E to see what I'm up against (video).

See, there are all sorts of ways to train. I'm choosing the smart, armchair hillwalking one. One of the hardest parts is the psychological challenge. I reckon it's best to work on that first - healthy mind, healthy body. Don't expect much peace up there though. There are more tents than T-in-the-Park.

Busking...

Oh no...forgot. I've got the guitar. But I never learned to play it. So just signed my life away to raise an impossible amount of sponsor money AND get frostbite, and I can't even go down the high street and sing for it. (Always a bit pathetic when you see those people busking with no musical instrument, you have to agree.)

Oh well, I'll just have to grub it all off my colleagues, although since there's only 9 of them I'm going to have to be extra specially nice to get that kind of lolly out of them. (What's four and a half grand divided by 9?)

Might have to go onto plan B. Face-painting - always works a treat - especially if you can target the kids that get a bit more pocket money than everyone else.

In a quandary

So here I am wondering what I've let myself in for. It'll probably be freezing up there. I can just feel the frostbite already.

But then you can't say no when someone asks you if you want to go up to Everest Base Camp, can you? Really, come on. If you say no, a) you'll get that sinking feeling afterwards that no one will ever ask you to do anything exciting ever again, and b) you'll feel like a right wimp.

And it's hardly an interesting conversation piece is it? "Well, I was going to go up Everest and all that, but then I thought, nah, I'll nae bother the noo."

It's all in a good cause after all. Hmmmm, hope we don't have to sleep in tents like Hillary and Norgay - I'll need to get more than a moonbag.