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Everest, altitude sickness & tuna sandwiches
Well hello all,
We are back in Kathmandu after our trek to Everest base camp.Both good and bad to report.For all the good stuff, read a travel brochure, I will give you the real story….
First few days trekking were tough but enjoyable.LB struggled the 2nd day on the walk up to Namche Bazar as the altitude and effort started to hit.Luckily I wasn't feeling any major effects; perhaps my great great great grandfather was a Himalayan yak farmer or something.
Anyhow, we continued on but the major impact was the bloody cold - not so bad when you are walking in the sun during the day but after 3pm when the big solar heater falls behind the clouds it becomes pretty chilly.The fact that all the "tea houses" we stayed in were basically made of ply wood with no heating whatsoever (our water bottles froze overnight in our room) didn't help a great deal.The higher we went the colder it got.That, combined with lack of hot water, showers, basic personal hygiene and some altitude sickness meant that we experienced a few tears from LB as we hit 4500m.
But being the trooper she is, LB struggled on and we both managed to summit Kala Patar, the highest trekking peak on the planet at 5545m (apparently above this you are into serious mountain climbing territory).From here we could look down on Everest Base Camp (no one was there as too cold even for the serious guys going to the top of Everest) and had some fine views of the world famous peak.
Due to LB's declining health we decided to omit the second part of our trek to Gokyo lakes and walk straight back from where we came and return to sea level.As LB started to improve with each meter fallen, I decided to deviate from the usual cuisine of rice and vegetable curry and go for a bit of tuna.Bad call.Suffice to say within a few hours I was heaving my guts out.3 days later and I am still using toilet paper like it is going out of fashion - got to love this traveling thing, and to think we are only in the first few weeks of an 8 month experience!
Well I suppose you can't really call yourself a world traveler until you have spent some quality time in a remote part of the globe leaning over a frozen squat loo!
Off to a wildlife park tomorrow in the south of the country.Just heard about the going ons in India so may take a few weeks before venturing there!
Hope all are well.
MT&LB
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