Expedition to Solomon's Throne

Runway into Lukla. As scary as it was landing, taking off may have been worse.

Sherpas, heroes of the Himalayas.

A "small" sampling of the horrid bedding conditions the expedition had to endure as they strove for the summit.

So many yaks! I love yaks!

The strange, snow covered ice-hound that intercepted the expedition while wandering through the barren landscape at 5100 metres. The little fellow happily guided us to the nearby town and was never seen again.

Top of the world as seen from Kala Pattar.

Just Protectin' the World's Tallest Mountain.

Mt. Everest (aka Sagarmatha, aka Chomolungma, aka Solomon's Throne), the black peak in the centre of the photograph. Barely visible in this picture is Lhotse (4th highest peak in the world) and in the foreground on the right is Nuptse (28th highest peak in the world).

No celebration is complete without a few rounds of recipe and a token Irishman.

After stashing half of our worldly belongings in a dusty hotel storage room, Jas and I jumped on a little twin otter prop plane for our trip into the Himalayas. The flight was only about 25 minutes long and apparently there was a brief glimpse of Mt. Everest, but I'm not sure if I was looking at the correct mountain given the number of peaks you can see from the air. The landing seemed more like a headfirst dive into the side of a mountain and I was pleasantly surprised when the runway appeared out of the clouds to safely catch us and pull our little plane into safety.

Before I begin on the rest of this tale, a little background. First, the trip to the base of Everest and then up to the best view point of Everest (a small, rocky peak known as Kala Pattar) usually takes about 15 days. We had 9 days. The majority of this time is spent acclimatizing to the altitude. Since we had both had bouts of altitude sickness in the past, we didn't want to play around too much with it, given that, if left unattended it can turn fatal in a very short amount of time. So, we scheduled in two days of just plain sitting around, and tried to adhere to the "sleep no more than 300 metres above your last night" train of thought. We also brought along the wonder drug known as Diamox, which increases acclimatization rates.

So, given our short time span, upon touching down in Lukla, we immediately began the long trek up to Namche. After dragging our out-of-shape and totally unacclimatized bodies into this town, we hunkered down for two nights, in an effort to adjust to the altitude. During our full day there, we did a hike up a nearby hill with a fellow from Oregon, who, after hearing us complain that we still hadn't seen Everest, kindly pointed out the triangular, black peak of the world's tallest mountain, far in the distance.

The next trekking day took us to the town of Tengboche, where along the way we passed the now seemingly normal communities full of Sherpas and Yaks. The trails between different villages are just starting to fill with tourists (this is the beginning of the season for it), but are sometimes already clogged with sherpa porters and trains of yaks carrying their massive loads higher up into the mountains. The night at Tengboche was far more unpleasant than any of the other nights we had, as our room was full of these thin little spider creatures along with their brown, wormlike maggot companions (two of which somehow ended up trekking across Jason's face during the night). We were happy to head out of there the next morning and continue our ascent to the village of Dingboche.

We spent another two nights at Dingboche acclimatizing, at this point we were at roughly 4350 metres. This time we didn't do much with our day off except read and try to eavesdrop on these 4 incredibly arrogant yet fantastically interesting English doctors, as they denounced and ridiculed all sorts of different subjects. It was here we decided to cut a day out of our acclimatization schedule and head right up to our last sleeping spot, Lobuche. The decision was made mainly because we had yet to suffer even any mild AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) and we figured, with enough Diamox (which at this point we were taking 500 mg a day), we could accomplish anything, even if the undesired side effects of the drug were waking us both up several times a night (mainly tingling fingers, feet and lips...along with squishy eyeballs, but we never tested this one). So, after two nights spent in relative comfort and feasting on the ever present potatoes of the region, we jumped up an additional 600 metres to Lobuche for our next night. Lobuche is the last real town (if it can even be called a town...) before reaching Everest Base Camp. As expected it was rather chilly and the altitude made everyone feel a bit off.

After a night there, we awoke just before 5am on the 11th to climb to the top of Kala Pattar. The sun was still asleep and the entire area seemed to be clouded in this thick fog, making us believe that our Everest view day would result in nothing more than seeing a bunch of clouds. Luckily, after a few hours of hiking, as we began the final ascent of our goal, we passed through the fog and were greeted with a perfect, blue-sky morning. Kala Pattar stands at 5554 metres and represents the highest that either of us had been to (outside of a plane...). Given that there is only 50% of the oxygen here that there is at sea level, it made for the strange situation of being constantly out of breath, but not feeling tired...it's sort of hard to explain, but it resulted in everyone moving at a snail pace as they approached the last few hundred metres (even the mighty sherpas). The views of Everest and the surrounding mountains were magnificent, as expected, and even the best photos we've seen of the area really can't do it justice.

After hanging out at the top for a couple hours, then spending a bit more time producing our theme shots and attempting to recreate scenes from Batman Begins, we started off for the long trip back to Lukla. We had decided to use the day that we cut out previously, for our return trip and it was well worth it. Since we had no more AMS worries, we were able to proceed at a much quicker pace down the Khumbu valley towards Lukla, and made it there after 3 long days of trekking. We picked up an Irishman to help keep us company for the final two days, but other than that, it was a fairly quiet return trip. Midway through our last day, we came across a Maoist group, who had apparently taken control of one of the little villages and was demanding a "Permission Tax" from all foreigners. After seeing their complete lack of firearms, we figured arguing with them for a while couldn't be such a dangerous proposition and ended up paying a quarter of what they originally charged us. As we were finishing our dialogues with them, their makeshift "officer" appeared and attempted to get things settled down, shouting out stern orders from behind his 60's style, viet-cong uniform, couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation.

The scariest part of the expedition probably came down to the last few hours this morning as we waited in the Lukla airport. The previous two days of flights had been cancelled due to bad weather and everyone knew that today's flights were on the edge of being called off (which would have started a domino like chain reaction of bad things for the two of us, given how tight our schedule is back to Delhi). Finally when the first and each subsequent plane landed on the freaky little runway, cheers and whistles would erupt from the crowd in the departure room. Finally when it was our turn to sprint across the tarmac, past the gloomy faces of those poor souls left to rot another day in Lukla, it felt more like I was escaping Stalingrad than some small Himalayan village. Alas, our flight did take off and ported us safely back to Kathmandu where we now can rest our blistered feet.

Tomorrow morning we have the pleasure of the 10-12 hour bus ride back to the Indian border and then onto Agra, through a series of buses and trains that we have lined up, all in an effort to see the Taj Mahal before flying away, which we probably should have just done when we were in Delhi previously. Oh well!