Everest Base Camp Trek Part One

Everest Base Camp Or Bust

So there we were in Namche Bazaar, at 3450 metres and about ten days walk from the nearest road, rocking on down to AC-DC along with Sherpa Tenzing's grandson, in the improbably named Paradise Club. Would Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay have been banging their heads to 'You Shook Me All Night Long'?

Why Everest? Because, of course, it is 'The Ultimate Hump' – thanks Tami Knight – the biggest mountain of all. I'm not going to mention this again, but it is 8848 metres / 29,028 feet high and still growing. It's also a mountain steeped in history and marinaded in popular interest all the way from the early attempts through to Krakauer's account of the '96 tragedy 'Into Thin Air' –one of those things you just have to see.

And then again, the trek passes through the most beautiful, dramatic mountain scenery in the world and brings you into contact with the incredibly hospitable, smiling Nepalese people with their credo 'come as a guest, leave as a friend' – sounds corny, but it's true. None of which really explains how we came to be banging heads and downing beers with Tashi Tenzing in the Paradise Club.

A Game Of Two Halves

In there beginning there was me, Alun Davies, AT's 18-stone Welsh publisher – a sort of tubby, misfiring, human Exocet missile aimed at the elusive summit of Lobuche East – and Kagi Sherpa, a climbing porter hired in Kathmandu to haul Alun's climbing gear from the roadhead at Jiri to the bottom of his chosen trekking peak.

Jiri - the traditionall trail head for Everest, though most trekkers now choose to fly to Lukla instead

We'd decided to walk from Jiri knowing that we'd be following in the path of the greats – Bonington, Whillans, Messner, Brian Blessed and the like – we figured all those footsteps would make the going easier. We'd also heard that the now optional section between Jiri (188km drive from Kathmandu) and the airstrip at Lukla was both beautiful and far quieter than the upper section between Lukla and the hump itself.

And so, on a moderately overcast morning, we dragged our complaining, mildly jet-lagged carcasses from our lodge in buzzing, bustling Jiri and set out on the three week-odd trail to the snows. I always get a buzz from those first few hours in a new place, pasting reality onto the vague bones of imagination. For the Himalayas, I mused, it's bloody hot –not surprising really as Jiri is at just under 2000 metres – but the real surprise was the lush post-monsoon green of the vegetation. The verdant agricultural terracing looks like something out of Burma or northern Thailand and the air quivers to the incessant chirping of cicadas and suffering trekkers.

Ups and Downs

I say suffering because the first few days were also a rude introduction to another characteristic feature of the Everest Base Camp pilgrimage, a surprising sprinkling of sharp ups and downs as the eastwards heading trail cut uncompromisingly across the north-south orientated river valleys of Nepal. We eased into things gently with an easy day, settling into the walking and the gentle lodge lifestyle.

If you're used to roughing it in the Andes or even Europe, the very civilised nature of the trekking here comes as something of a shock. Tea houses and lodges are dotted along the trail and it's hard to walk for more than an hour or so without seeing one – black tea, lemon tea or traditionally nasty 'sherpa tea' made with semi-rancid yak butter are all on the menu along with biscuits, Coca Cola, Mars bars, apple pie and more traditional offerings based around eggs and chapatis. In truth, you don't really need to carry food at all and it's great.

It also means that you can't help meeting other trekkers, both groups and independent travellers, though on this first section of the trail, groups are pretty rare. Which is how we came to meet Sherpa Tenzing's grandson - see profile elsewhere on the site - One minute I was jokingly telling some amiable Ozzies that Alun was a famous Welsh climber – an exercise in disbelief – the next we were shaking hands with their trek leader, a man who is the third generation of his family to have summited Everest.

With hindsight, the ten or so days between Jiri and Lukla were an idyllic introduction to trekking in Nepal. Even in peak season, which this was, the trail's still relatively quiet and the vicious altitude monster has yet to sink his fangs into your lungs. Most of the guide books describe the lodges here as 'basic', but to be honest most were no less comfortable than those higher up and a couple in Sete and Jumbesi served food as good or better than anywhere else on the trek.

At the time though we were distracted by the lashing tail of a tropical storm in the Bay of Benghal which dumped two metres of snow at higher altitudes, but at more modest elevations just ensured endless rain and crap visibility. How we moaned, almost as much in fact, as Alun griped about his rucksack, a device which apparently shared many of the less amiable characteristics of the Spanish Inquisition, but – being a dedicated climbing pack – in a rather more predictable way.

Hills, Heat And More Hills …

My memories of the first part of the trail have sort of conglomerated into a huge sticky mental ball of impressions and depressions. The first swaying Nepali suspension bridge on day one just as we reached Shivalaya, after which they just got longer, swingier and more suspended, the first traditional Nepali dawn chorus of hawking and spitting, the first mani stones and walls and my premier 'momos', sort of fried or boiled, filled Tibetan dumpling-ish things that taste great after a day's trekking.

And then there was the first really hard climb of the trek, up the unrelenting hill in the drizzle to Sete (2575 metres) and beyond to the Lamjura La, at 3530 metres the highest point of the Jiri section of the trek and the first gentle brush from the altitude monster's sharp little claws. Cursing the crappy drizzle and the clouds that made a mockery of the vistas of snow-capped mountains that should have rewarded our slogging, sluggish progress, but toasting our toes gently over the big woodburning iron stoves in the friendly lodges and then …

Revelations …

Climbing out of Junbesi, note that you're always 'climbing out' of somewhere on the Jiri section, gave us little idea of what was about to smack us straight between the eyes. More green hills, more craggy tops with a dusting of snow, but at last the weather had cleared, the skies were polariser blue and … And then, rounding a corner, rippling distant at the head of a long deep valley, a serried rank of snow white peaks stretching across the horizon, including on the far left hand side the tiny but unmistakable squat rock pyramid of the Ultimate Hump itself – Everest.

It's a real gob-smacker of a view and, if anything, the dreary weather that we'd endured over the days before, just polished the scene even brighter. We stood there and gawped like children. Amazing and worth all the effort of getting there. Even Alun momentarily forgot the ongoing war of attrition with his rucksack to gaze wordlessly into the distance. Actually I lied, in reality he gibbered like an overexcited chimp, but it was that sort of moment.

The place is the Everest View Sherpa Lodge at 3100 metres and it's the first point on the trek where you can see the mountain itself. Groovy. It's also a brooding harbinger to the end of solitude as Jiri trekkers know it ...

Everest Base Camp Trek Part Two

Everest Base Camp Trek Part Three

Everest Base Camp Trek Practicalities