The trail from Lukla airport to Everest Base Camp climbs from an altitude of 2840m to a head-spinning, lung-grasping 5364m. Yet this is no wilderness trek. The route is flecked with hikers kitted out in expensive outdoor gear; porters bent under impossible loads; fleets of furry yaks ferrying local supplies and trekkers’ kit up and down the hills; and local Nepalese going about their business. This might be the Himalayas, but the Khumbu region of eastern Nepal is home to over 150,000 Sherpas and the bustle of daily life is much in evidence. As well as the local colour there is plenty of camaraderie among the walkers, as we wish each other luck and enquire anxiously about conditions higher up. We meet other Xtreme Everest groups coming back down from Base Camp, a group of doctors and a group of Sherpas participating in the same medical research as us. They tell us that night-time temperatures are as low as -20 degrees Celsius. My bone marrow shivers at the thought. (more…)
Month: March 2013
Flying into the roof of the world
The Twin Otter’s propellors whirred like giant bees, its conical nose tilted upward and then we were surging upwards into a propitiously blue sky. After the delay we’d experienced in getting to Kathmandu and a tense few hours milling around the airport check-in zone as our baggage was checked against the strict weight limits, it was a relief to be airborne. We knew though that the mountain weather was capricious, so taking off was no guarantee that we’d be able to land at Lukla, our destination. The city shrank below us and was soon left behind as we flew over the lush green plain at the bottom of the deep gash of the Kathmandu Valley. Vertiginous agricultural terraces clung to its sides and the bottom was patched with jewel green rice fields strewn alongside the lazily winding Dudh Koshi river. (more…)
Vacuum packed to Delhi airport (and back!)
The first time we landed in Delhi after our long-haul leg from London I felt the pull of exotic India and wished I was going out into the traffic-filled, smog-drenched yet endlessly intriguing streets of the city. The second time, more than eight hours later, it was the last place I wanted to be. Our short-hop two-hour flight to Kathmandu had turned into a working day’s worth of aimless circling and to-ing and fro-ing, only to end up right back where we’d started, in Delhi’s terminal 3, with its sweeps of dull orange, geometric-patterned carpet, like an Escher painting gone wrong. (more…)
Gooster on the Loose 