Nepal, May 2003

We arrived at the international airport in Kathmandu on a Sunday afternoon, having flown overnight from Sydney via Bangkok. We immediately tried to book the 45-minute flight to Lukla, the starting point for our trek. Unfortunately, these flights only depart in the morning, so we made a reservation for 7:00 AM the next morning and headed into town for the night.
 
The flight from Kathmandu to Lukla is stunning, even if you're jetlagged and had to wake up at 4:00 AM to get to the airport on time. The plane climbs almost the entire time, going from an altitude of about 1300 meters to 2800 meters (9200 feet). Passengers on the left side of the aircraft are treated to a view of the high Himalyan peaks above them. One tip is to make sure you get a seat that is not under the wings, because you'll miss seeing the mountains above you. Before we expected it, the plane flew into the side of a valley, and landed on a short runway tilted 10% upwards before coming to a stop in front of a vertical stone wall.
 
The photo on the right shows the 16-passenger twin turboprop (a Dornier 227) we rode to Lukla. If you look carefully you can see the runway, behind the airplane, sloping downward into the valley.

From Lukla, the trail slowly ascends a v-shaped valley. In most places, the trail is wide and well maintained. For centuries, this has been the only way for people to get to and from their homes in these high valleys. All the climbers and most supplies get to Everest Base Camp along this trail. We had entered the ultimate car-free people-powered society and our legs could feel it.

Sometimes the trail would shift from one side of the valley to the other with a suspension bridge connecting the two. During the last 50 years, most bridges have been upgraded to a Swiss-designed steel construction like the one shown here. These bridges are relatively sturdy and stable. They seem to be able to take a whole herd of yaks crossing at the same time.
 
About four and a half hours hike from our starting point in Lukla, we entered the Sagarmatha National Park. "Sagarmatha" is the Nepali name for Mount Everest and means something like "Mother of us all." Upon entering the park, trekkers must pay an entrance fee of about US$15 per person for a single-entry permit.

The entry point to the park had a chart showing the number of trekkers entering each month since 1998. This chart shown at the left, (which shows trekkers only, not people planning to climb Everest) had some interesting statistics. October is the busiest month. This is also a climbing season on Everest. November, March and April are also popular with trekkers. Although May is the biggest climbing month, there are relatively few trekkers. Almost no one comes during the monsoon season--June, July and August. The number of international visitors to the park dropped dramatically between 2001 and 2002 due to Maoist guerilla activity in the valley below Lukla. Before arriving in Nepal we were unaware of this fact because we had a guide book published in 2000. Tourism hadn't recovered by the time we got there despite a ceasefire having been declared a couple of months previously. For us, the low tourist numbers were an advantage. We had no troubles getting accomodations anywhere on our trek or in Kathmandu.

In the lower part of our trek, the villages were numerous and pleasant. One walks through the "main street" of each village, with its snack shops, tea rooms, restaurants and lodges ready to serve you. Some of the villages, such as the one shown in the photo on the right, also have souvenir displays along the path.

After a day and a half of walking, we reached the town of Namche Bazaar, located at 3400 meters (11200 feet). Namche is the main trading center for the whole Everest region. Originally, the town had farm plots on terraces, but now it primarily houses, feeds, supports, and supplies trekkers and climbers. There are at least thirty lodges in Namche as well as a variety of campgrounds. The main streets are filled with climbing equipment shops, souvenir shops and internet cafes. Namche is the highest-elevation town that has full-time electricity. Above Namche, all electrical power comes from solar cells, wind mills or diesel generators.
 
The photo at the left shows Namche Bazaar as taken from one of the hills that surrounds it. The town is located in a small cirque of a steep valley.

The photo at the right shows the main street in Namche. There isn't much room for trekkers and climbers and their porters and yaks to get through.
 
Because Namche Bazaar is at an elevation where people start having trouble with altitude, most trekkers and climbers stay here at least two nights before ascending further. One can find people from around the world, and from your home town, shopping, hiking in the area, and trying out the restaurants. It's a good place to hang out. We met many trekkers we'd seen on the trail the previous two days.
 
One can even encounter mountain celebrities or people who might become celebrities on Everest. On our way down we accidentally chatted with Peter Hillary (Sir Edmond's son) and his daughter, at a bakery in the area without realizing who they were until afterwards. Jean even proudly told him that she'd almost seen Reinhold Messner and had seen Tenzing Norgay's grandson.

Namche Bazaar got the second part of its name because it has a large market or bazaar every Saturday morning. On the way back we were lucky enough to see this market. This market is where porters from below Namche bring their foodstuffs to be sold to the residents in the surrounding area and higher up the valleys. These residents then use this food for themselves and prepare it for the trekkers and climbers. In this way the money spent by the trekkers and climbers greases the whole regional economy.
 
The photo on the left shows the Saturday market.

The highland valleys of Nepal are Buddhist and very spiritual. Every town seems to have its variety of shrines and every possible place seems to have its prayer flags saying their prayers automatically as they flap in the breeze. The photo on the right shows a "Stupa" or hemispherically-shaped shrine in Namche Bazaar.

The painted stone on the left is called a mani stone. Sometimes these are seen by themselves. Sometimes there are many smaller versions of these stones that form a wall. If they form a wall, it is important to walk on the left side of the wall (as Jean is not doing in this photo).
 
The inscription on this stone, and on all other mani stones is the meditation chant "Om Mani Padme Hum" (hail to the jewel in the lotus), which is endlessly repeated. The inscription in the lower right (welcome to Pasang Hotel) shows that the Nepalese Buddhists in these parts can be practical in combining religion and commercialism.

The photo on the right is of Tengboche monastery. This is several hours walk above Namche Bazaar and the largest monastery in the region. The monastery houses a large contingent of Buddhist monks of all ages. There are also lodges and a campground run by the monastery.

The Tengboche monastery appears to be self sufficient in having its only fields for growing crops.

After spending two night acclimatizing in Namche Bazaar, we hiked from Namche through Tengboche to Pangboche, the highest settlement in the valley that is inhabited year-around. It sits at about 3800 meters (12,600 feet).
 
The photo on the right was taken on the trail before we reached Pangboche. This town lies approximately at the tree line and has many small fields surrounded by stone fences for growing potatoes or grazing yaks.

The walk from Namche Bazaar to Pangboche was quite grueling, so we were happy to come around the corner into the village and spot this lodge called the Highland Sherpa Resort. Better yet, they had a nice lounge with a 360 degree view of the surrounding mountains. It was so nice and we were so worn out that we ended up staying two nights.
 
When we arrived in Pangboche, the gentleman sitting on this horse was getting ready to leave. He is a professor at the Wharton Business School who had been on a multi-day trek with colleagues. Unfortunately, an old knee injury had deteriorated to the point where he could hardly walk anymore. Their sherpa guide had remembered that this lodge owner had a horse. For $400 he was able to get a horse ride back to Lukla to catch a flight to Kathmandu. Although this may sound like a lot of money, it's less than the $3000 it costs be evacuated by helicopter, which judging from the helicopters we heard overhead, seemed to be about a daily occurrence.

One of the other reasons why we stayed two days in Pangboche was the interesting conversations that we had with the owners and other guests at the lodge. The owner, Ang Temba Sherpa, had climbed Everest on the first "all sherpa" ascent in 1991. You can see his photo on top of Everest and read about him in the December 1991 issue of National Geographic. His wife, Yangzing, also spoke good English and had been a guide and cook on various trekking and climbing expeditions on lower peaks. In particular, she'd been on some "all women's" expeditions. They had both been to the US and had installed a wood stove made in Idaho into their lounge.
 
The first night we stayed in Pangboche, we met a Japanese climber who was part of an expedition that was helping to clean rubbish from the higher camps on Everest. One of the problems he mentioned was that there are still many bodies on the mountain that couldn't be brought down. Some of these bodies must be stepped over by climbers on their way up and down. The sherpas do not want to touch these dead bodies for religious reasons. The non-sherpas don't have enough energy above 8000 meters to do anything with the bodies, so the bodies just stay there. Below 8000 meters, the Japanese group was helping to bury some of the bodies.

On a lighter note, we also met Glenn Edwards, a fire fighter from the Toronto area who is shown in the photo on the right above. Glenn organized an expedition consisting of himself, a friend and three sherpas to climb Everest. It took him two years to collect the sponsorship money for this attempt. When we met him in Pangboche, Glenn had already been in the Everest region for over five weeks and spent multiple nights sleeping at some of the high altitude camps above base camp. He'd descended to Pangboche to "fatten himself up" for his summit attempt. During most of the time we saw him, Glenn ate one meal after another. It becomes harder and harder to digest food the higher one goes in altitude. So it's common for climbers to descend for a couple of days to build themselves back up. A Belgian we met said that above 8000 meters, he couldn't even digest Belgian chocolates.
 
After a couple of very nice days in Pangboche, we went up to the next town, a place called Dingboche at 4360 meters (14,400 feet) and stayed in the Snow Lion Lodge shown left above. We chose this lodge because it was recommended by some of the people we had met in Pangboche.

Each of these lodges had almost the same type of accomodations. The rooms were unheated with two twin beds with foam mattresses on them. The toilet was down the hall or outside somewhere. At lower elevations, we sometimes had toilet seats, but higher up you squatted over a hole in the floor. Almost everywhere, showers were available, but the procedure involved boiling water on a stove and then running it through some plumbing. As we got higher, the nighttime tempertures started dipping below freezing and we were glad that we'd brought a down sleeping bag.

Everywhere, the water was unsafe to drink if it hadn't been boiled first. Fortunately, we had a water filter and then put iodine in the water as a second precaution. That seemed to do the trick.
 
Although the facilities were somewhat primitive, the view made up for it.

While in Dingboche, we heard that there was a daily medical briefing about altitude-related sicknesses given in the neighboring town of Pheriche. The briefing is given at a clinic run by the Himalayan Rescue Association. This clinic has two volunteer doctors, one from the US and one from Denmark. Among the things to watch out for are AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edima) and HACE (high altitude cerebral edima).
 
The high altitude medical briefing was quite inspirational. As a result, we decided to take the next day and hike to higher altitude, but continue to sleep in the same lodge in Dingboche for a second night. The photo at the right was taken at the briefing.

When we did set off for the next increment of altitude two days later, we also chose to use a porter. Normally trekkers and climbers hire a porter for their entire trek and pay them a fixed wage (approximately $5/day). We chose not to do this because often the porters have their own ideas of what towns to go to and we wanted to be completely flexible with the option of stopping whenever we felt tired. For two days, however, we found it beneficial to hire a porter for the day. In both cases, the owner of the lodge found us the porter.
 
For the day when we hiked from Dingboche to Lobouche, the owner of the lodge hired out one of his kitchen boys (shown on the left), to be our porter. He was a delightful kid, who didn't have much knowledge of English, so we turned part of the hike into a an English lesson. Bert taught him how to say "yak dung" and "lots of mountains" and he taught us the names of the surrounding snowcapped peaks.

When one hires a porter for multiple days, the porter is responsible for paying for their own lodging and meals. The hut shown in the photo on the right was built specifically as housing for porters. The pack shown here is typical of the loads a porter would carry. In this case, it consisted of three backpacks strapped together.
 
We met several trekkers who were travelling by themselves. Some of these trekkers would hire a porter to accompany them and hike with them every day. This seemed like a good way to do it.

The photo on the left shows the load one porter was carrying for ABC news. As we were going down, there was an ABC news crew with over ten porter loads of camera equipment like this going up.

Porters often come from lowland areas. Historically, they had little in the way of good footwear, although that seems to have changed during the last several years. The porters we saw on the trail seemed to have decent shoes. There is now a concerted effort to ensure that porters are taken care of, as shown by this poster, which we saw displayed in many lodges.

Because porters have to pay for their own meals, they usually brought and prepared their own food. Here is a place near a stream where we saw porters, probably from one or more expeditions, cooking their food on a fire.

By this point in our trip we were hiking in areas where the only buildings were lodges built specifically for trekkers or porters. The photo on the right is of the "town" of Duglha, which consisted of two lodges along a stream. These lodges are there for people who want to acclimate to the higher altitude in smaller steps. Since we were feeling pretty good, we decided to give this place a miss and keep going up.

Above Duglha is the terminal moraine for the Khumbu glacier, a site for memorials to sherpas and climbers who died on Everest. There were many markers. Typically they have bronze plaques. The following is a sample inscription:
 
"Michael Matthews, aged 22 years. Lost whilst descending from the summit of Everest, 13 May 1999. Much loved by his family and friends. 1977-1999."
 
The following was another example:
 
". . . Babu Chiri Sherpa was born on June 22, 1965 . . . At the very young age of 13 he started his career as a climber. By the age of 36 he had summited Everest 10 times and spent an unprecedented 21 hours on the summit without the aid of auxilary oxygen and become the fastest climber of the world's highest peak by climbing it in 16 hours 56 minutes, thus creating two records on Everest. On Sunday the 29th of April 2001, while on his way to the summit of Mount Everest for the 11th time, he fell into a crevasse and this extraordinary climber left this world. May his soul rest in peace and his dream be fulfilled."

During this climbing season, the 16 hour 56 minute speed climbing record from Base Camp to the summit was broken twice. The first time by a sherpa who did it in under 12 hours and 45 minutes. The second time by a sherpa who accomplished this feat in under 10 hours and 57 minutes. In both cases, these climbers went up during the night to avoid the crowds.
 
Our destination that day was Lobouche, which is at 4930 meters (16,300 feet). This place, shown at the right consists of about five lodges, none of which is particularly good, and a water supply that is known to cause illnesses. Nothing bad happened to us. We even learned that the cook in our lodge won the Mount Everest marathon (that's right, 26 miles at these altitudes), the week after we were there.

The next day, we left our non-essential items in Lobouche and headed up with one pack to what would be the highest lodge on our trek, in Gorak Shep. Gorak Shep consists of two lodges next to a dried-out lake bed. The lake bed is visible in light brown near the bottom of the photo on the left. We were pleasantly surprized by the quality and cleanliness of the lodge. By now, we had arrived at 5200 meters (over 17,000 feet). The giant Malaysian flag shown in this photo was brought up and placed on the hillside by a Malaysian trekking group.
 
The snow-capped peak in this photo is called Pumori. Although it is less than 8000 meters tall, it is quite difficult to climb. The dark-colored "hill" in front of Pumori is a mountain called Kala Pattar. This is an 5500 meter (18,000 foot) peak from which one can get an excellent view of both Everest and Everest Base camp.

The photo on the right was taken of Pumori when we are half-way up Kala Pattar. The shape of Pumori is different in this photo than in the previous photo because this photo was taken at a 45 degree angle looking up to the top of the mountain.

The photo on the left is the view of Everest from Kala Pattar. Now that we've been to Kala Pattar, we've started noticing that most views of Everest seem to be taken from this point. Part of the reason for this is that Mount Everest is not actually visible from Everest Base Camp because there is a smaller ridge in the way.
 
Everest Base Camp is located on the rocky part of the glacier behind the dark-colored ridge at the bottom of this photo.

The photo at the right is a zoomed section of the previous photo showing Everest Base Camp taken from Kala Pattar. If you click on this photo to expand its size, you can more clearly see some of the hundreds of colored dots that are actually tents. It is a little like seeing thousands of stars at night. It becomes impossible to count them all.

By the time we got back down to Gorak Shep from Kala Pattar, we were too tired to make the 2+ hour hike to Base Camp. Instead we lounged around and agreed to get up early the next morning and spend the whole day.
 
The walk to base camp was over rough rocks. Eventually, one ends up directly on the Khumbu glacier. Base Camp consists of hundreds of tents pitched on platforms made of rocks that are on top of the glacier and being carried down by it. Since everything is on the glacier, nothing remains from one climbing season to the next. Also, one can sometimes discover that a small crevasse starts forming under one's tent and it has to be moved.
 
The first sets of tents we approached as we entered base camp were these shown on the right. When we asked one of the people in this camp a question, we were immediately invited in for tea.

That lead to us spending the next 2+ hours talking climbing, philosophy, etc. with Ian and Rob, from Victoria, Canada. As it turns out, the "natives" in Base Camp are very hospitable, especially when they've been there for six weeks and the next weather window for climbing was more than a week away.
 
The photo at the right shows us with Ian and Rob. Every climber seems to have a story and Ian and Rob were certainly unique. Up until a couple of years ago, Ian (on the right, with hair long enough to be a terrorist) had been a pilot for Delta, working out of Hong Kong and making lots of money. He had managed to save enough so that he could fund this trip without needing sponsors. They had bought a space on another group's permit and seemed to be doing the whole thing for fun. Rob (on the left, with the hair short enough to be a Buddhist monk) doesn't really climb, he's more of a swimmer, but came along to cook. They had started from sea level in the Bay of Bengal. Ian was only interested in reaching the summit without oxygen, because that was the "pure" way of doing it. However, he wanted his climbing sherpa to be on oxygen because someone needs to be sane at those altitudes. Oh, and they don't have a website--that made them really unique. It also means we don't know if Ian was successful in reaching the summit.

After visiting Ian and Rob, we sought out Glenn Edwards, whom we met earlier in Pangboche. We found Glenn in his dining tent near a giant Canadian flag. Glenn had 45 sponsors, so we thought the photo on the left was an appropriate way to represent him. Glenn wasn't able to summit this year. When the weather cleared and he got to 7500 meters he discovered that his body was simply to weak to make it the rest of the way. His partner couldn't summit because of an inner ear infection.

Next, we sought out Alan Arnette, who is the boss of Joel Larner, a friend of ours. Alan had almost reached the summit in and attempt in 2002 and came back this year to try again.
 
Base camp is an anarchic place. There are no maps and it is so big that most climbers don't know most of the other groups. The best way we could find Alan was to go to the internet cafe (pictured here) and ask them where his group might be. As it turns out the, internet cafe only knows people's names and what direction they walk when they've finished sending their emails.

Fortunately, just at the right time, Alan happened to walk to the internet cafe. We introduced ourselves, chatted for a while and took this photo and the Khumbu Icefall.
 
All told, we heard that there were 199 non-Nepalese climbers who had paid their $10,000/person climbing fee to the Nepalese government to attempt to go to the summit this season. Typically, it costs another $50-60K in fees if one attempts to climb as part of a guided expdition. This pays for food, porters, sherpas, etc. As a result there were over 300 climbing sherpas to help as well as a high number of cooks, etc in base camp. By mid-May, there had not been a day that the winds had died down enough for anyone even to attempt the summit, so there was a lot of risk and pressure. As it turns out, Alan and his expedition company, Adventure Consultants attempted the summit on a day when lots of others also tried. They got to the Hillary Step too late in the day when the queue was already too long and bad weather was closing in, so they weren't able to summit this year. Alan made it as high as the balcony, which is 7900 meters (27,000 feet).

Because the chances of summiting can be quite low, it is best to have fun in the process, like these South Africans on their cricket pitch. We also heard that the Irish were quite a fun group of climbers to hang out with. As we were descending, there were several Irish trekking groups heading up to Base Camp to give their climbers support (or was it Guinness?).
 
It was also pointed out to us that, because of the expense of climbing Everest, there was a higher percentage of millionaires at Everest Base Camp than in Carmel. My own observation is that there are more solar panels in Everest Base Camp than anywhere I've ever been.

All too soon, it was time for us to leave Base Camp and make our way to Gorak Shep for the night. Before leaving the Khumbu glacier, I couldn't resist taking a photo of some of the weird phenomena one sees. Here a rock has been moved down by the glacier. However, most of the ice under the rock has melted and is being held up only by the ice that is still in its shadow.
 

By now we had been in Nepal for eleven days. Our flight to Sydney was in another ten days. Having achieved our goal of getting to Base Camp, we had options of what to do with our remaining time. One option was to add a multi-day side trip that would take us over another pass to a place called Gokyo, from which one also has good view of Everest and several other high peaks.
 
Having read all the books we'd brought with us, we decided that seeing more peaks was not as important for us as restocking our reading materials. So, the next morning, we got up to the beautiful sunrise seen here and in the next photo and started heading down.

Although we stayed in lodges, it should be noted that we also got to know several trekking groups that used tents. Generally, these were larger (10+ trekker) groups that had guides, sherpas, porters and cooks. As a result, camping in Nepal usually costs considerably more than staying in lodges (that charge $1-3 per night).

The walk down is a reminder of all the things we covered going up and forgotten. While it took us 11 days to go up, we made it down in three. So, although the scenery was just as nice, the pace was faster.

During the walk down, I was able to add to my collection of yak photos. Yaks are a relative of the cow that has been bred for high altitudes. In fact, these animals have trouble at lower altitudes. Yaks can go all the way to base camp. We often saw whole yak trains carrying expedition gear. As a walker, the key is to get out of the way when one sees an oncoming yak train. Yaks are quite wide with packs on and swing their horned heads from side to side. They're generally mellow unless you try to ride on one, which they don't like at all.

Yaks seem to know their own way up the trail. The yak herder is usually at the back.

Sometimes we would even find a yak going up or down the trail by himself. The yaks with long fur and big horns are purebreed. There are also ones with shorter fur that are a crossbreed between a yak and a cow.

It is amazing the rough ground that yaks can cover. They can walk on glaciers and up concrete stairs. They don't seem to be afraid to go across the suspension bridges. Since their pace is about the same as our walking pace, the only times we needed to watch out was when they were coming from the other direction.

One of the other traditions in Nepal is that one gets a ceremonial silk scarf. Here is a photo of Jean receiving her scarf from Yangzing on the way back through Pangboche.

Here is a side view of one of the long span suspension bridges that I took on the way down.

Along our walk, there would also be kids that would stop and greet us. The normal greeting is "namaste" which seems to mean hello. Kids would also ask us for pens, money and "boom-boom", which really meant bon bons, or candy. We were warned that it is better not to give any little presents to kids. Sometimes, they would just smile and wave at us.

All too soon, we were back in the little plane to Kathmandu.
 
These planes have the advantage that everyone gets an aisle and window seat. It can be a bit tricky to make sure you get a flight back. We arrived back in Lukla five minutes before the airline reservation office closed and took the last two seats on the plane. Some of the other friends we had previously met on the trail got there later and hadn't reconfirmed their seats. When they got to the airport the next morning, they discovered that they'd been bumped. This is a much bigger problem when there are more tourists.

From her window, Jean got one last glimpse of the snow-capped peaks sticking out over the clouds.

We arrived back in Kathmandu and had a week before our plane back to Sydney was scheduled to leave. This wasn't much of a problem because Kathmandu is a great town and we had a nice hotel with a toilet and shower. Thai airlines was also quite accommodating and we were able to get seats out of Kathmandu four days early, which meant that we would have three nights in Kathmandu and five nights in Sydney.
 
We used our time in Kathmandu to recover from our hike, catch up on our email, and gain back some of the weight we'd lost. Here we are in a Mexican restaurant overlooking one of the main shopping streets in Thamel, the tourist section of Kathmandu.

We also took the opportunity to visit the Bouddhanath stupa in Kathmandu. This is a traditional stopping off place for climbers to Everest. During the IMAX expedition in 1996, they lit 25,000 candles at night around the stupa for good luck. It seems to have worked for them. Some of the other expeditions that year were not so lucky.

The Bouddhanath stupa also has other monasteries and shrines around it, including young Buddhist monks like these, that were more than willing to pose for tourists.

After several relaxing days in Kathmandu, we headed back out to the airport and boarded our flight homeward by way of Bangkok and Sydney.
 
We hope you've enjoyed this travelogue. If you would like to learn more about various expeditions and their results on Mount Everest this year, there are two good websites; MountEverest.Net and EverestNews.Com. Both of these sites cover most of the climbs made each year.
 
Jean and Bert

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This page was last updated on 1 June 03.