Namaste from Nepal - Lived666 does Everest EBC

Pitbull said:
O nice, I would do that then. Sounds amazing, ENJOY! always gave it a skip due to the costs involved, I thought you needed a permit just to set foot on the mountain. Now I'll definitely also give it a go sometime.
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If you do it RVQ style you can do it for cheap, you main cost, besides getting to Nepal would be the short flight to Lukla....but I think RVQ is a tad nuts for going alone......then again I need my hand held just to go to Woolies:erm:
 
Ah man, enjoy it! Would love to do this sometime. Will look at Kilimanjaro first though I reckon. A guy at work did it a few years ago and all inclusive, he said it cost him about R40k.
 
so almost packed...have an insane amount of medicines and goodies, the list of items just goes on and on and on....
packing.jpg
 
Trek day one finished early, staying in a tea house on phakding.amazing mountain views! Trying to figure out how to upload pics
 
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lived666 said:
Trek day one finished early, staying in a tea house on phakding.amazing mountain views! Trying to figure out how to upload pics
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Did you make it to EBC and back alright?
 
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RVQ said:
Did you make it to EBC and back alright?
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Indeed we did, no altitude sickness, though I did struggle with heaving breathing the last stretch, but made it all the way there and back.....sheez, some of the climbs on the way up, a 2 hour continuous uphill climb can be soul draining at times!
Amazing views, our weather was fantastic, sunny and clear skies every day....hardly had to use down jackets or even sleeping bags (some great thick duvets at the tea-houses), except occasionally at night. Its gets very expensive the higher you go, which we were expecting, but R65.00 for a 500ml coke is a tad wtf :)
Anyhow great experience, loved Nepal and the chaos of Kathmandu - we had a driver from the trekking company for Kathmandu, dude must have balls and nerves of steel.
 
lived666 said:
Trek day one finished early, staying in a tea house on phakding.amazing mountain views! Trying to figure out how to upload pics
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Wifi or how you connecting?

(Looking forward to some pics :))
 
saor said:
Wifi or how you connecting?

(Looking forward to some pics :))
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Over there I used a Nepali sim in a 3g router and wifi calling on my phone but the iphone struggled - either the altitude or cold or both - smart phones aren't happy on the mountain, most of the guides will have some outdated analog phone with endless battery life. It can also get expensive to charge, though we did have solar charges and a few places had working outlets in the rooms. Some of the tea houses had their own wifi but everything up there costs a fortune.
 
so some background.
We went with a trekking company - for various reasons, but mainly for the ease and comfort of everything being arranged for you.
Anyhow part of the package was a cultural tour on day one around Kathmandu valley.
It was quite interesting but we cut it short because we were exhausted, it took 30 hours to get there, and we still had to buy a few things and were leaving the next morning at 5am for the trek.
Anyhow some pics of that tour, this is Swayambhunathaka AKA the Monkey temple - was packed with people burning all kinds of whatnot with prayers to god x and y and Buddha. The Nepali are a tad pissed off with India at the moment because they both arguing over his place of birth.
I have shrunk these pics from original size - lets see how they come out:
monkey temple.jpg
monkey2.jpg
 
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this was our guide for the cultural tour. He was a history lecturer at a university that was closed down during their 10 year civil war and he migrated to Kathmandu as did a few million others and the only work he could find that uses his knowledge is as a guide. I would have liked to have spent more time, this guy knew everything about nepal and more, fascinating but sad at the same time.
guide.jpg
guide1.jpg

This was next to another attraction by their old kings palaces - anyhow we had seen this on the m-net travel show with the two dudes, where they place singing healing bowls on you...
singingbowls.jpg
 
onto the trek:
Dinky plane - the 30 minute or so flight from Kathmandu to Lukla. We had severe bag weight restriction so we packed stuff into our jackets - security goes to me, what is this, do you have a bomb on you - I was like no, chocolates so he goes ok, you can go...
dinkyplane.jpg
our first view of the himalayas from the plane window, you can see clouds trapped in the valleys - these aren't considered high mountains
plane1.jpg
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The airport strip at Lukla is a small strip on an uphill for landing - if the plane goes too far it ends up in a wall - I have a video somewhere, scary as hell.
 
lived666 said:
Indeed we did, no altitude sickness, though I did struggle with heaving breathing the last stretch, but made it all the way there and back.....sheez, some of the climbs on the way up, a 2 hour continuous uphill climb can be soul draining at times!
Amazing views, our weather was fantastic, sunny and clear skies every day....hardly had to use down jackets or even sleeping bags (some great thick duvets at the tea-houses), except occasionally at night. Its gets very expensive the higher you go, which we were expecting, but R65.00 for a 500ml coke is a tad wtf :)
Anyhow great experience, loved Nepal and the chaos of Kathmandu - we had a driver from the trekking company for Kathmandu, dude must have balls and nerves of steel.
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Awesome!

I see you guys were really prepared and took a lot, over the limit of 15kg per person, my bag weighed in at less than 11KG. Surprised you bothered with technology on the mountain, not many do. I used my phone only for pictures and as I went alone I had to message the family back home whenever I found WiFi but that was connect message and disconnect.

But now that you've been I'm sure you ran into many solo trekkers? I know I met from early 20-something to 70-something male and female solo trekkers, so I had lots of company on the trek. So for anyone wanting but can't convince others they shouldn't worry its a very busy trail.

Thinking about it is bringing back some great memories!
 
RVQ said:
Awesome!

I see you guys were really prepared and took a lot, over the limit of 15kg per person, my bag weighed in at less than 11KG. Surprised you bothered with technology on the mountain, not many do. I used my phone only for pictures and as I went alone I had to message the family back home whenever I found WiFi but that was connect message and disconnect.

But now that you've been I'm sure you ran into many solo trekkers? I know I met from early 20-something to 70-something male and female solo trekkers, so I had lots of company on the trek. So for anyone wanting but can't convince others they shouldn't worry its a very busy trail.

Thinking about it is bringing back some great memories!
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Yeah, December isn't considered a busy time but the trail was busy - just enough though not be irky, I would seriously hate the busy season. Re technology, nah, some people had these massive solar panels, I took a phone as wife was at home stressing...though after Namche not really much in way of signal.

Fairly easy route to follow to EBC, and if you don't mind doing your own planning, organisation and can carry a backpack with around 12kg you could actually do this without a guide or porters, but our guide was A++ and was worth it just to listen to his stories, he actually arranged porters and guides for solo and group trekkers on route that were struggling.

Indeed a lot of solo travellers, a lot like to be left alone in their own world, a lot of (loud) Aussies and a surprisingly large number of only female groups, son got hammered (on the way back) a couple times with some extremely fit Belgians.

Food isn't bad even though you are in the middle of nowhere, though one of us got a tummy bug from yak cheese, but no-one had the runs which I was worried about. Our water drops worked well and we avoided all meat.

Some sections were hard as ****, but we all coped and got past various individual hurdles, you don't have much choice :)

Phenomenal adventure - considering maybe doing Annapurna circuit sometime in the future.
 
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lived666 said:
Phenomenal adventure - considering maybe doing Annapurna circuit sometime in the future.
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Same here also wanting to do Annapurna (know fellow travelers I met keen on joining me) but will probably do Mont Blanc and Grand Canyon Rim to Rim first as I go visit the countries when I do the hikes and already spent about three weeks touring Nepal.
 
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