The trek started with a death-defying 30 minute flight from Kathmandu to the hillside village of Lukla. The runway here is a 400 metre slither of asphalt angled at around 20 degrees, with a 700 metre vertical drop at one end. The scenery on the flight was quite extraordinary, however just as the mountains' calming influence was taking hold, a steep dive down to the runway had us all clutching something tight. From cruising altitude to alighting the aircraft took around 2 and a half minutes.
But it was straight back onto the trails, yaks and all...
The exciting part of this trip was doing it by myself, ie no guides or porters. It's not particulaly hard to follow the trail up the valley, or find somewhere to sleep for the night, but it did give me plenty of 'Stephen time' to re-align my chakras and get back to nature.
Half way up to Everest I spent the night at Tengboche (3867m), home to an active monastery. Among a handful of other uncultured swine, I was privileged to witness a daily prayer and devotion ceremony by the monks which lasted around 3 hours. The only interruption was from a gaggle of Japanese flash-photographers who thought they were at the zoo.
After 7 days of walking I reached Gorak Shep, a collection of 4 lodges at 5100m. Thankfully the dreaded altitude sickenesses avoided me, however many were not so lucky. The drone of helicoptors filled the valley every 2 hours or so, making the area feel like a MASH camp as stretchers scurried back and forth.
Kallar Pattar is a 5700m hill which provides the closest views of Mt Everest. I took a risk against the trend of the majority of the other trekkers, and the hovering weather, and hiked up for sunset. I scored.
From Gorak Shep, I then made my way up to Everest Base Camp, across to Island Peak, then back down to my buddies who were waiting for me in Lukla.
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