Walking to Everest base camp was easy. Could've done it with my eyes closed. And the cold - bah - nothing! Honestly, snow is not that cold. I could've ran there. Basically did. A walk in the park.........NOT!!!
ha ha - so it was an awesome climb which involved me and stef acting like twits for about the first three days. We were high on the mountain air or something - cos we could not stop laughing and giggling at everything! We met our guide and porter at the airport (the scariest little airport and airplane in the world - i pretty much closed my eyes and hoped for the best!)and liked them both straight away. Altho we were forced to fit both our bags into one, as it was too much for the porter. That took a good hour and a half! still we managed, and by early morning we were off trekking.
The first day was easy. Only trekked for about 3 hrs, and most of it downhill. Our guides seemed a bit concerned that we kept laughing all the time. I guess they weren't used to such silliness. They liked it tho - said it was a nice change to some of the moody pushy tourists they get. I guess some people look for luxury which is quite stupid.
The second day was quite different tho - uphill and hard! But we made it, still happy and still excited to be away from the busy city. Namche Bazaar was a pretty town, which was set on a hill so you had to walk upwards to get anywhere. Unfortunately, the second night I had my first bad night of diarhea which the whole hotel seemed to know about. The next day was a day for acclimitizing, but I spent most of it in bed. I tried to make it to a lookout, but that wasn't gonna happen as I had verylittle food in me, and no energy at all.
Stef was still doing well, and she made it to the top and had a much better day than me. THe next day I felt better, and was able to eat my breakfast which was a good sign. We set off for the next town, THame, and within an hour I had thrown up along the track about four times and could barely move. I was still sick:( The guides looked after me well, and took me to a small hostel where they tried to force me to drink soup, but nothing was staying down. Everyone looked a bit scared by this stage, as it was only the fourth day and we had a long way to go! Luckily my immune system was in top shape, and by the next day I was fine again - and eating quite a bit. Time for Stef to be sick lol. She arrived back from thame looking not very healthy, and we realised it was now time for her to go through the pain and suffering.
With our sicknesses, lying in bed with diarhea or stomach bug is one thing, trekking for 6 hrs/day, a lot of it uphill is another. Every step becomes difficult and breathing sometimes feels impossible. Looking back, it does seem amazing we made it at all considering how sick we both got within the first days of trekking!
