Conquering Everest Base Camp

We woke at 6am, packed and ate and then headed up into the valley. We climbed the first, uncomfortable climb to the Mani stones, celebrating and lives of the climbers who have perished attempting to climb to the top of Mount Everest. It truly is a beautiful place, so serene and thought provoking – we spent some time wandering through the memorials, reading plaques, taking photographs and soaking in the morning sun.

We headed up to Loboche and stopped off for a quick hot drink to warm us to the core. The winds were very high on the way up and it was exceedingly hard work walking and remaining upright! Plus we were absolutely covered in sand! We continued past Loboche and arrived at Gorek Shep around 11.30am. A very speedy travel over some difficult terrain. We unpacked our rucksacks and had some lunch – unfortunately I ate some rice and cheese, which made me feel very, very unwell. I was sick a couple of times which wasn’t the greatest start to our attempt to reach Everest Base Camp!

Nevertheless, I packed up my rucksack and with Q’s head pounding from the effects of altitude, we started the walk to EBC. It was over lots of moraine, up the left hand side of the valley and then across the glacier to reach EBC. We reached the camp after around 1 hour 45 minutes, finding all the prayer flags and stones left by other climbers and trekkers. We took lots of photos and absorbed the views before turning around to head back to Gorak Shep. We completed the round trip in around 3 and a half hours, pretty speedy really. Unfortunately Q was suffering with his headache due to altitude so we needed to decide on a new trekking plan. We were still keen to go to Gokyo, but having spoken with Jetta, our Porter, and talked through the height loss, it was evident that we would need to head back down the valley to Periche. Q was still keen to try and get up some of Kala Patthar but thought his head might not cope with the height gain. So, the dinner time plan was for us to try KP in the morning before heading back down the valley.

As it was, plans changed again! We ate dinner and suddenly I felt very unwell. I was sick again and had a runny tummy – thinking that might be it, I headed off to bed…and the rest of the story will be told tomorrow!