The first time I visited the amazing mountain kingdom of Nepal, it was in 1994 as a 21-year-old co-leader of an overland expedition, where my friend Rob and I bought and renovated an old Land Rover Series 3 and sold 5 tickets to make up a 7-person group.
Then, we arrived after a 10,000-mile journey across Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan & India, crossing the India-Nepal border by driving down a canal towpath at night.
This time, it was a bit of a contrast, as we swapped a battered old Land Rover for a Qatar Airways business class ticket, thanks to a very cheap upgrade.
When I left Nepal in 1994, after completing the 22-day, 150-mile Annapurna Circuit trek, little did I think it would take me 30 years to return, but a university degree, a family, and then starting my own business meant that time, money and the opportunity for such trips were in short supply.
This time around I had my friend, personal trainer Chris Matthews, and his client Paul Flintan to thank for the chance to return to Nepal. They had hatched the idea of attempting the Everest Base Camp trip, and when Chris mentioned the idea to my wife, she immediately said that she thought I would love to join them.
So, that is how myself and my good friend and walking companion Greg found ourselves joining them on their trip of a lifetime, and my return to a country I loved the last time I visited. After arriving in the capital Kathmandu and having a couple of days to sight see and recover from the long flight, we set off on our main mission.
The 12-day Base Camp trek starts with a short flight into Lukla, a very short, steep runway of what is known as the most dangerous airport in the world, and not ideal for any nervous fliers.
During the trek you stay in tea houses, fairly basic lodges with twin rooms, a communal eating area that is usually warmed by a yak dung fire, where the food typically comprises of the traditional dal bhat, rice, noodles or potatoes. At lower elevations you will often get wifi, showers and even some en-suite rooms, but as you get higher the accommodation becomes ever more basic – and cold, it was minus 20 at Base Camp itself.
The first two days find trekkers winding their way up the valleys to the incredible town of Namche Bazaar, a major trading post for the area which sits in a huge amphitheatre, surrounded by some of the highest mountains on earth.
At 3400 metres you are already higher than the top of most of Europe’s ski resorts, yet here life appears very normal, with locals going to work, school, and running their businesses the same as anywhere else (including some fabulous cafes and the highest Irish pub in the world, all with great wifi!) – they just happen to be perched on a mountain side at a height that leaves newcomers gasping for air, and with everything the town needs having to be carried up from Lukla on the 2 day hike.
After an acclimatisation day to allow us to climb higher then sleep lower to get used to less oxygen, we continued up into the mountains, the trees and greenery giving way to more barren landscapes.
Staying first at the mountain-top temple and hamlet of Tengboche, we then climbed up to 4400 metres to the gateway village of Dingboche, for another acclimatisation day. This was our last chance for any semblance of luxury, so we took the chance to have a final shower and visit the famous Café 4410 for coffee and cakes.
The next 3 days were spent trekking very slowly up steeper and more barren hillsides, trying to operate with very little oxygen, and enduring cold, uncomfortable nights. Some of our 8-person party started to be sick, a combination of the altitude and poor food / sanitation, and by the time we reached Gorakshep, the last settlement before Base Camp, one of our friends Sophie was starting to really suffer from altitude sickness.
Our guides were brilliant at monitoring our condition, taking regular blood oxygen readings and assessing our performance, and unfortunately for Sophie that was the end of her trek, and she had to descend to a lower village, Pheriche, by horse, to recover and wait for us to return in a couple of days.
For the rest of us it was now time for the final push, and 9 days after leaving Lukla we finally stumbled into Base Camp, a huge temporary village of well over a thousand people, situated at 5300 metres on the Khumbu icefall. It is an amazing spectacle, and so big that it took us nearly half an hour to walk from the entrance to Base Camp to our tents. We had some time now to explore a bit and ventured onto the icefall which felt like another world.
Our trip also included the very rare opportunity to spend the night at Base Camp (most treks simply visit and return to Gorakshep the same day), so after a fabulous fresh meal, the ingredients for which had all been flown in by helicopter, we retired to our two person tents for a very disturbed night, mainly spent trying to breathe and ignore all the stones under our sleeping bags and mats.
During the night another member of our party, Marcy, started to suffer from altitude sickness, so our last remaining guide (the first guide having accompanied Sophie to Pheriche), had no choice but to set off down in the early morning with Marcy and her friend Zandy, leaving us to follow later with the porters.
With the main objective achieved for 7 of us, it was now time to hike back to Lukla, taking just 3 days to walk down what had taken us 9 days up.
With every downhill step we felt the benefit of more oxygen, and two days later, after rejoining the other 3 members of the party, we arrived back in Namche Bazaar for a well-earned beer.
The next day we arrived back in Lukla, only to find that due to a storm coming in our flight was heavily delayed, so we then had to sit and wait it out, not knowing if or when the flights would resume, with the only alternative a harrowing 2-day drive by jeep back to Kathmandu.
Thankfully there was a small window in the storm, and we were very lucky to secure the last flight of the day, taking us back to Kathmandu, and a couple of days recuperation before our 3-day trip to Chitwan safari park, and then our flight home.
Summing up a trip to Nepal, it is chaotic, loud, and colourful in the city; full of wonder as you explore the high mountains with the most incredible views at every turn; but most of all it is the people that will make your trip one you won’t forget, as the Nepalese are some of the kindest, politest, most generous, and above all happy people I have ever met. If you ever get chance to go, I would wholeheartedly recommend it – I just hope it doesn’t take me 30 years to return again!
