As I'm writing this post I'm sitting impatiently in the departure gate of the Kathmandu international airport. My flight was scheduled to leave on the 4th but the earliest flight I could get was on the 8th due to a Turkish airlines flight crash landing on the runway, canceling all flights. Consequently for the last 4 full days I've been trapped in Kathmandu with cheap food, great beer and awesome people. Its been such a nightmare. I've been keenly following the repair process of the Turkish airlines flight so I could have a better idea of when I'd be able to escape this god forsaken paradise. It turns out that they'd planned on sending 11 Engineers to the airport to repair the plane; no wonder it took so long! The Engineers flight was probably canceled.
OK OK OK there's a lot of blogging ive missed out while I've been hiking up Everest. Let me just start from the beginning and go from there.
The Everest crew and I began our adventure by catching a small broken down propellar plane to Lukla. We flew through the air like a cannon ball and landed on a landing strip that was no longer than 100m. I now find it ironic that the international airliner crashed and not our crappy folded piece of paper.
When we started tracking we were bombarded with awesome views of the country side. There were villages, mountains, rivers, yaks, dogs, cute Nepalis children, muels and porters to gawk at. The porters earned a large deal of respect from me because they carried 4 of our 10kg bags each. At first I thought that the porters must be the hero's of Nepal. A few days later I would discover how incorrect I was. The first walk was a peice of cake; it only lasted 3 hours and really made us all underestimate the difficulty of the rest of the hike. To end the day our guide, Dinesh, asked us to partake in a group activity where we all say 2 highlights and 1 lowlight about the day. Daniel (ze German) was honest enough to say "the food is pretty expensive..." but was cut short by Dinesh almost bursting into tears. We learned afterwards to always say "no lowlights" for the next few days. Don't worry though because by the 3rd day everyone was genuine with their 'no lowlights' comment.
Everyday got harder and harder, yet the reward got better and better. We saw no snow for the first 8 days, but that didn't stop us from freezing in -20°C conditions. The views were spectacular, especially when you crossed rickity suspension bridges 600m in the air. The food remained expensive and of poor quality; most guest houses along the way had a 'if it can fit in a toaster, then I can cook it policy'. I once ordered "spathetti with soup" which turned out to be a few strands of noodles in boiling water - now that's pathetti.
One of the most memorable things we got to do before we got to the top was play soccer. Most guest houses would have a spare soccer ball which we would use to play against the locals. I'm one of our games we even played against some Monks. Fun fact: monks are awesome at football! Its like they have God on their side or something. We westerners had no chance mainly due to the high altitude. Every 5m of running would be followed by wheezing, coughing and panting. That being said, I think the affects of altitude sickness were vastly overrated for our trip; I never experienced a headache once. The only notable effect of altulitude sickness when sleeping for me was that my dreams became MUCH more real. My roommate would often tell me that I was sleep laughing or sleep screaming at 3:00 in the morning. Pretty crazy, huh?
By day 7 we found a cute dog that followed us for 2 straight days up the mountain. He didn't quite make it to base camp with us, but he got close. We called him "Mo Mo" after the delicious Nepalese snack food. We weren't very creative with our name assigning. Originally Matt Gates was called Matt 1 and I was called Matt a. Later we were known Matt 1a- and Matt a1'.
The day we reached the top was undoubtably the best. Base camp was nothing more than a pile of rocks, but that didn't make the sense of accomplishment any less amazing. Once we hit base camp we were hit by a blizzard. The snow was so severe that the visibility was only 20m. We also heard 4 consecutive strikes of thunder which our guide later admitted was actually the sound of 4 avalanches. We managed to treck out just before the path to base camp was closed due to dangerous conditions. Everyone behind us had to say goodbye to their base camp dream and head back. I personally loved the challenging conditions because it allowed me to finally get my frozen beard. It was just as awesome as I had dreamed it would be.
Because of the blizzard, the path back home looked completely different. It was like we had trecked into a different world. The snow was wonderfully thick and was great to trudge through. We found Mo Mo again rolling and playing in the snow without a care in the world on our way down. It took 4 days to get back to Lukla with the path we'd chosen. We were lucky with our choice because the other path (which involved going past Pakra one day later) managed to get 6m of snow. The poor guys there had to be helicopter evacuated out.
When we arrived back in Lukla we shared our stories and memories. I personally won't forget how beautiful Everest looked. Unlike any other mountain around it, its tip pierced the clouds which formed a surreal halo around it. Later on the crew decided to go out and dance to celebrate. Sadly this a bad end to an amazing trip because my phobia of dancing got the better of me again and I ended up isolating myself from the group. Seriously why is dancing such an international standard for having fun? Can't people enjoy not jerkjng their bodies in weird directions?
We flew our paper airplane back to the land of sneezing grey filth and dysentry the next morning. Kathmandu was a welcome change though because water was only 15 rupies (unlike the 380 they were charging us at base camp) and food was delicious.
When I first heard my flight to Dubai was canceled, I was at first overjoyed because I thought it would give me enough time to experience the Holi festival which was the next day. The festival was brilliant. I met a few new people and enjoyed splattering the crap out of little kids with paint. I got drunk that night with glass sized vodka and jager shots. By the end my face was colored a sickly mix of red, purple, white, silver, orange, and yellow . I guess you could say my delayed flight made me feel blue (baddmmchh)! Daniel (ze German) got even more wasted than me and ended up stumbling into our hostel room, propped up by the receptionist, shouting that he needed some weed. Now I know what a drug addicted umpa lumpa looks like.
Oh, I'm sorry to end this post on a downer, but I have one lasting impression of intrepid I want to vent to the world. Intrepid really knows their shit, but they rip off locals! I found out that only 5% of the $1350 I payed Intrepid to climb everest actually goes to the guides and porters, the rest goes back to Australia! If you're going to book a trip to Everest, hire a your own personal Sherpa to guide you - it'll be cheaper and you'll do more good for the Nepalis people.
Alright, my flight is about to board! I'm finally going to Dubai to meet my cousins, aunty and my mum who had skillfully tried to surprise me in Dubai. I'm coming mamma!
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