News

It's been tough though, mostly because of the cold; we've been sleeping in freezing rooms from day 1. At the highest lodges our water bottles became ice bottles and one morning when I wanted to put my contact lenses on I found them frozen in their little box as well (but I defrosted them in the sun and they're fine, even got X-ray vision now :)

Conditionally it was never a problem, we had to go up slowly anyway to acclimatise to the altitude. But Danny got sick (food poisoning prolly) after a few days, so on the fifth day while he was recovering I climbed 1.2km to the top of Chukung Ri and back after a Sherpa told me it was possible as a day trip. That was a tough but fantastic day because I hadn't expected to get that high that fast. Danny recovered fast and the fifth day was a compulsary acclimatisation day anyway so we stayed on schedule all the way to Gorak Shep, the highest lodge at 5180m. From there we climbed Kala Pattar which has the best views on the Everest, and we stayed on top until the sunset, which was a fantastic sight. It's when only the top of the Everest is still catching sunlight while the rest of the landscape has already gone dark that you know you're watching the highest mountain in the world. I have fantastic pictures of it, somehow my camera makes it seem like the Everest was on fire, and the little cloud that was hanging around the top seems like smoke.

Next morning we visited Everest base camp. Since there was no expedition going on right now there was nothing to see except the wrecks of two helicopters that once crashed there. Still nice to see the famous ice-fall (the first major obstacle for Everest expeditions) up close. After that we started going down so fast that we won a day on our schedule. Since we'd also foreseen a day to deal with altitude sickness, we could move our plane ticket two days forward, which means we have two extra days for our India trip.

During the night before the very last day of the trek it was my turn to get sick. I spent half the night running to the bathroom, couldn't even keep in anything I drank. I didn't want to spend an extra night in a freezing room so we set out on the last long walk to the airport anyway with Danny carrying part of my luggage. What a miserable day; I had zero energy and felt like Jesus carrying his cross, except that my cross was neatly folded into a backpack and that I had to spend 7 hours climbing other hills before I could climb Golgotha. Oh and also that I could check into a hotel once I got there instead of being crucified, that too.

Anyway two days later now and I'm okay living on orange juice and some occasional yoghurt. We've spend yesterday and today visiting some places around Kathmandu. We're now going to take a night bus to the Indian border (11 hours to go 100km, I'm not kidding, that's Nepal), and tomorrow we'll spend the entire day trying to get to Bodghaya, the holiest city of Buddhism. From there our India journey will begin. I should be able to get online regularly, so I'll keep you posted!

• Fri 28/10: fly to Delhi
• Sun 30/10: fly to Kathmandu
• Mon 31/10: fly to Lukla (2800m) and begin trek
• (Mon 7/11): reach Gorak Shep (5160m), our highest night shelter
• (Mon 7/11 & Tue 8/11): climb Kala Patar (5545m) and visit Everest Base Camp (5400m)
• Sun 13/11: fly back to Kathmandu from Lukla
• Mon 14/11: over land to Varanasi in India, a 24h trip :(
• 12 days trip through northern India
• Sun 27/11: fly back to Belgium

Friday is a national strike in Belgium, so we're very much worried we can't even take off, but we can only wait and see.

I'll add my travel blog frame above like on previous trips. I may post something the first few days, and will do my best to post something on the 13th when we're back in Kathmandu after the trek.

Oh btw I have 4 sets of 4 reloadable AA batteries, 1.5 Gb in memory cards, and a 20 Gb harddisk. No height, cold or lack of electricity is going to stop me from taking LOTS of pictures :)