For me, my much anticipated Himalayan trek, with Everest Base Camp as my eventual goal, started badly and, unfortunately, got worse. Despite almost a year of hard, intensive training a particularly nasty chest infection and head cold hit me about a week before departure. Had I known then what I do now I most definitely would have cancelled my trip. It’s certainly not something to be attempted without being fully healthy.
Our intrepid party also included Jez ‘the Principal’ Lees, Lee ‘caddy to the stars’ Adelly and was augmented at the last moment by Lou ‘thunder from down under’ Zigeletti. Jez with all his cross-bay swim training and previous Himalayan experience was ideally prepared, so too was Lee, with many years of Hash House Harriers expertise behind him. I hoped my own background of high-level sports participation would see me okay but, ‘last minute Lou’ as the oldest member of the team, and the least prepared, would need to be kept an eye on.
The boys in Kathmandu domestic airport.
Things began to go awry no sooner than we landed in Kathmandu (forever now to be known by me as Kathman-don’t!). Crushed into the smallest and oldest taxis known to man we were blocked by police from leaving the airport, as we had apparently arrived smack in the middle of a city-wide riot! Deciding to walk some way towards our hotel, and taking photos of the factions involved, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the 2 rock-throwing, tyre-burning groups. Not the kind of reception we were expecting!
The boys did it!
Kathmandu itself failed to live up to all my pre-trip expectations of romance, history and beautiful buildings. The reality is a city strewn with rubble, rubbish and filth with deep, pot-holed roads and continuous power cuts. Added to all of this was a level of driving so awful and inconsiderate it made Thai driving seem sedate and courteous. To say Kathmandu was a disappointment is like saying Everest is a big hill.
Waking on our second day it’s fair to say there was a little trepidation about what lay ahead. Before us was the dreaded internal turbo-prop flight to Lukla. Rated, in a recent TV programme, as the most dangerous airport in the world, that only 11 pilots are experienced enough to land at, it plonks you straight into the Himalayas at an altitude higher than any mountain in Europe (and many other parts of the world) and all on a runway above a sheer cliff and about as long as Soi LK Metro! Throw in a 2 or 3 hour delay for fog and it just made the anticipation worse.
In the calm point of the riot!
Thankfully, despite some rather scary turbulence over the mountains, we were later safely ensconced at Lukla but the delay meant we only had about 4 hours of daylight left, so we got cracking on to our first overnight lodge at Tok Tok. Although we were supposedly going climbing the first couple of hours were downhill, so at our first stop we were barely higher than where we started. Here, at our lodge, was where 3 of us got our first introduction to the mountain food. It is basically a standardised ‘menu’ that only varies in price as you climb higher up the mountains. It’s fair to say you wont find any Jamie Olivers or Gary Rhodes delights up there, just a mush of barely edible gunge. You want to lose weight? Then forget about the Atkins Diet and get up to the Himalayas for a while! Somehow though, with Jez’s legendary eating prowess it never seemed to bother him!
The third day saw the brutality begin in earnest with a 9 hour slog. Namche Bazar is the destination that all the books say you should take a 2 day lay-over in to begin your acclimatization. We, however, simply ploughed on up the trail through 45 degree climbs and rocky switch-back after switch-back to leave it far behind us and lodging, eventually, at Kyangjuma.
Jeez, but this is tough!
Another similar length haul to Pangboche the next day bought us our first views of the magnificence that is Everest and what we had all come to see. It truly was an awesome and even spiritual sight. Almost as awesome was seeing the incredible loads that the tiny Nepalese porters carried up the trail. Timber, gas bottles, food, drink and all and sundry goods were being lugged up the near vertical slopes. I honestly believe that if somebody got hold of these guys and put them in a marathon at sea-level then they would probably stroll it even with a bag of cement on their backs, such is their incredible lung capacity.
The next day we were crossing precarious Indiana Jones style bridges on rugged paths with sheer drops that gave us beautiful vistas of snow-capped mountains, forests, icy-cold streams and waterfalls but, I’m afraid, I couldn’t get any enjoyment out of it. As I know now I was suffering from the first stages of altitude sickness or AMS, acute mountain sickness. I’d been stubbornly ignoring the symptoms, putting it down to my chest infection and sure I’d get over it, after all I’d never shirked a physical challenge in my life before but I was getting worse with every moment. Jez was handling it well of course, as too was Lee and Lou, after a shaky start, appeared to be coping okay but, at 120kg with my pack and the heaviest by a good way in the group, the illness was making me seriously fatigued.
Another monster climb greeted us the next day and as I progressively got slower neither me, nor my friends, could ignore it any longer, I was dangerously ill. With no sleep, food or drink for 2 days, excruciating headaches, nausea and dizziness I virtually collapsed into the lodge at Dugla. I was only about 200 metres in altitude from the start of the Base Camp trek, it was all so close.
Lou, graciously, agreed to stay with me to see if I improved overnight while Lee and Jez continued on up, with tentative plans to meet the following day if a miracle occurred. However, after one of the worst nights of my life, where my messed up mind even considered making what would have been a near suicidal trek down the mountain in darkness, it was abundantly clear I couldn’t go on. Lou nurse-maided me down the mountain over the next two and a half days and in the meantime our other 2 guys successfully completed their Base Camp trek, great work guys!
With his personal goal achieved Lee immediately turned and headed for the lower altitudes whilst Jez pressed on and completed the treacherous glacier at the Cho La pass to Gokyo and then the Renjo pass, both at around 5400m. Like his putting from 50 yards out… I don’t know how he does it!
It is very difficult in a few words to capture just how arduous and dangerous this trek is. Sadly, whilst we were there we heard of 2 people who had died of AMS. There is no cure for this illness, only quickly descending in altitude can relieve the symptoms. There was also a girl knocked down the mountain and killed by a yak from one of the supply trains. Plus we met countless others, many more experienced than myself, who had to give up long before I did. There was no way of truly understanding beforehand of what this trek entails, even if I had been fully 100% healthy this would still have been the toughest thing I have ever undertaken.
To sum it all up, if you are thinking of doing this and you are reasonably fit, then get fitter and lose 5kg, if you are not so fit then lose 10kg and spend 6 months on the stepper or leg press. Oh, and be prepared to seriously slum it and get cold and dirty, there ain’t no mod cons there!
For me it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’ve ticked that box and I won’t be back again!
