The Long Way Up to Everest Base Camp

It's 11pm and the start of a long night of packing, emails, and all the little things you try to get done before a big trip.  It feels like being back in Toronto, about to board a plane to Thailand, or back in China, about to get on the bike and head into Tibet: tremendous excitement.  Tomorrow I'm going on a bus that will take me to the start of a 35-day trek up into the Khumbu Region of Nepal, to the Himalayas, Sagarmatha and many more strange buzzwords.

35 days.  That's a long time to be out in the hills.  It's not as remote as it sounds: these are busy trails with lodges to sleep in that will prepare you home-cooked meals.  Beer, electricity, hot water are all available, for a price.  But there are no roads.  This land is my land this land is your land but you sure as hell better be ready to walk.  The only other sizeable issue is altitude, since the lack of oxygen can be problematic if you ascend too quickly.  I shudder to think about the price of a Snickers bar with those parameters in mind, and will likely augment my stash to 20, just to be safe.  Or should I budget one per day?

The big highlight of the trek will be reaching Everest Base Camp, somewhere around November 7.  Sometimes you tell people you want to hike to Everest Base Camp and they roll their eyes as if it's this big cliche.  Maybe Everest is indeed the Paris Hilton of the outdoor world, but it still captures the imagination.  I remember reading the illustrated world atlas (complete with the USSR) my parents gave me when I was in Grade 2, and looking at the pages that compared the longest rivers, the most population countries, and the tallest mountains.  I remember tracing a route from the exotic sounding Kathmandu to the top of the world, and that's the dream that I get to realize starting tomorrow.  Travel is about soaking up different cultures, and the culture of people who pursue the world's highest point is as much a part of humanity as any other place I've been, though it is likely much more vain, ambitious, and self-centred.  All that aside, I imagine the views are going to be fantastic.

And, of course, if there's time, maybe we'll pop up to Everest summit to snap a few pics.

After base camp (EBC for those in the know), there are some other high passes in the region that make for a nice little loop.  It all gets highly variable, and I can shrink the hike down a bunch if I'm tired of walking or, more realistically, have filled up 8 GB of memory with pictures of mountains and snow.  If you're Jim Smith and you actually check these things out on a map, we'll be walking from Jiri to Lukla then up to Namche Bazaar, Lobuche and EBC.  From there it's west to Gokyo, then Thame, back down to Lukla, and east a bunch to Tumlingtar.  Ambition from an armchair, that's what tonight is all about.

Have I pointed out that I'm excited?  Beyond excited.  Anyway, there won't be much in the way of blogging for the next few weeks, except maybe something for the sake of novelty.  I'll try to provide the odd Twitter update which you see up in the top right corner of this site, but otherwise you won't hear from me from the dark side of Everest.  Enjoy Hallowe'en Remembrance Day Matt's Birthday and all that.  On November 7 look to the east, and if you squint really hard you might spy me with a long-carried bottle of wine, waving from a perch in the shadow of Mount Everest.