A 21 day trek through the Himalayas part 4 - Gokyo to EBC and back to Lukla -

We made the trek back around from Gokyo to the infamous Everest Base Camp. It was a long, cold and snow filled walk back around the mountains. There were definitely times when I thought if it was worth trekking the rest of the way to see EBC, after all we had heard it was slightly over rated due to the shear amount of people that visited the area. It took us 4 days to reach Gorek Shep, the closest town to EBC. It was extremely busy in the guesthouses, there were only 4 guesthouses in the town and big tour groups filled them up very quickly. We were lucky that Tom had his racing boots on and sped ahead to snag us one of the last 5 rooms in the village.

After an afternoon stroll through the snow we settled in for the night ready for an early 4 am start the next morning to be the first to the top of Kala Patthar to see the sunrise over everest.

We stuck to our plan and left the guesthouse by 4am, it was dark and cold as we made our way over the snow covered ground up Kala Patthar. Crampons and down jackets were a definite must this morning. We could see in the distance a row of lights making their way up everest, it made us thankful that wasn’t us!

It took a while to make it to the summit. As the sun began to rise and we realised we were not goingto be blessed with the clear sky we had hoped for, I started to lose momentum and questioned if it was worth continuing another hour up the mountain. Brett was already ahead of me, as was everyone else so I got up and slowly plodded to the top. The altitude was not being kind, none of us felt well and the climb was difficult and slow. We stayed on the peak for an hour or so, the clouds cleared slowly and we got a pretty great view of the surrounding mountains.

After a Quick descent and we were back in the guesthouse for a rushed breakfast before setting off early to EBC. On our way out there we met a young Nepalese guy who was waiting at base camp to summit everest. He hadn’t told his family he was planning on climbing until he had arrived at lukla airport and started the trek up. He told us he thought it would be a safe year to climb this year and sounded excited to be there. He told us his team was planning on being there for at least another 9 weeks.

Base camp was nothing like we had imagined, but it was incredible none the less and we all felt it was worth the extra days to get there. While I imagined helicopters bringing in supplies we were actually met with many yaks, donkeys and porters carrying in massive loads of goods to the camp.

The snow started and none of us were feeling well from a mix of an early morning hike and high altitude so we rushed back to the guesthouse and had a very lazy rest of the day. Tomorrow was our first day descending, it felt good thinking we had no more big mountains to walk up.

We walked from Gorek Shep to Tengboche the next day. Tom left us half way down to go see if he could cross the cho la pass, and Hanna and Timo went a different direction to see a town they were interested in. Brett and I took the shortest way possible back. An 10 hour day! But we were blessed with good weather and they walk seemed relatively easy after 19 days of hiking. We stayed in Tengboche for the night, enjoyed a bottle of rum and coke to celebrate and in the morning coincidently bumped in to Hanna and Timo again.

Tengboche

We all walked back to Namche Bazaar together and stayed in a nice guesthouse for the night. Our only desire was a hot shower and we were lucky to get what I think was the best shower in the history of all time. 21 days and 4 showers, 2 of which were hot buckets and 1 which was a cold shower, made this hot shower amazing.

Suspension bridge on the way back from Namche Bazaar

One last day to go. Namche bazaar to Lukla to catch the infamous flight out. This day was tough, it may have been because it was the last day and we just wanted to be there and get it over with or maybe it was because we knew we were leaving the next day so the desire for the next destination was non existent. Either way, it was slow, long and probably counted as the worst day hiking we had. But we arrived, had a few drinks together and the next day boarded our little flight out of the world most dangerous airport.

A 20 person plane. The inflight service consisted of a some cotton wool to put in your ears and a lolly. The plane sped off down the down hill, couple of hundred meter runway that drops off over the edge of the mountain and thankfully took flight. Half and hour later we were back in the hectic world of Kathmandu sad that our hike was over.