It was a feeling of excitement and worry. We got on the mini plane from Kathmandu, Nepal to a small village called Lukla where we would start the trek to Mount Everest’s base camp.
It was a horrid, bumpy plane ride to the village, and an even worse landing. When we got off the plane and entered the village, we were stunned. It was sunny, the skies filled with a blue hue. Mountains gated the entire village, with a view of only the sky and the Himalayas.
We ate breakfast there before starting the trek – eggs with two pieces of poorly toasted bread. We walked between two large lines of yaks with large packages burdening their backs.
We walked up stairs, which were poorly made of stone, exhausting me only 30 minutes into the hike. It was difficult and draining, both physically and mentally. It was only the first day, yet I felt like giving up.
We reached a village every 15 minutes while climbing, which gave us time to rest, but we ended up resting a bit too much.
Picture of the mountain rage from the span of three days of trekking.
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We got to the camp, which was called Phakding, in the early evening after trekking for five hours. The rooms were rusty with two beds on both sides, and the bathrooms were barely bearable, but what would you expect from a lodge in the mountains?
The next day, we ate porridge and began hiking. That day’s hike was going to be very difficult. We had a large amount of uphills, and towards the last hour or so, the uphills got really bad.
It ended up being a straight path upwards with no resting points, making it one of the toughest days we were faced with.
We finally reached the camp, Namche Bazaar, around five in the evening. We ate a lot of food and rested the rest of the night and all the next day.
The next day, we started hiking to Tengboche, which would be our next camp. It was slow-paced, easy-going at first, but then got more difficult and uphill as we continued on.
At the camp, someone in our group ended up getting Altitude Sickness or AMS, which is a sickness one gets at certain altitudes. She was brought back down from the mountains by a helicopter and we all had to continue, but then two more people in the group had to be brought down by helicopter as well.
Flash forward a few days and we are on our way to Everest Base Camp, which was only a few hours away from the camp we were at. The winds were horribly high, and the cold weather took over all of us.
When we got to the base camp, it was extremely windy, but high in energy. We ended up making it to the base camp, and putting our flags there. We were very happy about making it through these extremely high winds and weather that was definitely not on our side, but we did it.
Everest Base Camp was an amazing experience that cannot be taken away.