India-Nepal-Thailand: April 2012

What an amazing experience! We trekked for 20 days from Jiri (where the only road from Kathmandu to the Everest region ends) all the way to Base Camp of the highest mountain in the world. Most trekkers choose to fly to Lukla and save 7-8 days, but we decided to be a bit more adventurous and see the "real" Nepal where small mountain villages dot the trail and you could walk all day and not see single tourist. Once we reached Lukla, the crowds of trekkers arriving fresh off the flights invaded our peace and quite, but the spectacular emergence of snow-covered peaks made up for the annoyance. From Lukla we met up with our friend Caleb from the States and our amazing guide Bhim. It took us 8 days to reach Base Camp and 3 more to return to Lukla for our flight back to Kathmandu.

The trek was exhausting both physically and mentally. Each day we would trek anywhere from 6-10 hours and ascend 400-700 meters in altitude. As we got higher in elevation, the cold became colder and the thin air thinner with less and less oxygen to breathe. It became difficult to walk more than a few strenuous minutes before having to stop and catch your breath. Altitude sickness also set in above 4,500 meters and dizziness and throbbing headaches became the norm. We would take medication to control the symptoms of AMS but it would only help to an extent and the side effects of peeing every hour or so made for very cold nights running outside to the restroom. It honestly was Hell battling exhaustion, cold and altitude sickness all the while exerting ourselves physically day after day.

Our lodging consisted of small trekking lodges called "tea houses" that populated each little village along the trail. Lower on the trail in Lukla and Namche Bazaar there were many lodges to choose from with a variety of comfort levels to meet your budget. Some even had running hot showers and flushing Western toilets! As you got higher up the mountain however, the variety and comforts disappeared as all lodges consisted of poorly insulated wooden box rooms with hard beds and a shared hole in the ground for a toilet. The dining room would usually have a central stove fueled by Yak dung (made for a very smoky and foul smelling room) and would only be on during dinner time. The rooms had zero heat and weren't much warmer than outside. We would go straight from the warm dining room to our sleeping bags and shiver to get warm. Higher on the mountain we would get hot water in our water bottles and place them in our sleeping bags to help warm our feet at night.

The lodges had kitchens with all the same menu options and flavors. Because most lodges had only one or two small stoves to cook for 20-30 trekkers staying there, you had to order dinner as soon as you arrived in the afternoon and order breakfast the night before. After 20 days of eating from the same menu, we were quite sick of fried rice, dal bhat and porridge.

Despite the difficult conditions of the trek, the views and knowledge of reaching such a remote place in the world were quite worth the suffering. The reward of standing at Base Camp of Mt. Everest was extremely special and we had a rare beautiful day to take photos and soak in the views of Everest, Nupse, Pumori and more. Also equally as stunning was climbing to the top of Kala Patthar (which is 200 meters above Base Camp) to see better views of Everest and the surrounding peaks.