Author Topic: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR  (Read 78134 times)

Offline SamDaMan

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #40 on: September 24, 2012, 01:07:42 AM »
At the rate ur going it will be! :-P I didn't mean a 500 pg book there are places that will put on a hard cover for u even small books but at least one of those pamphlets with the spiral thingy on the side....
But I'm still proud to be from clev!

Offline Fan of Dan

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #41 on: September 24, 2012, 01:19:30 AM »
(and fan of dan my wife thanks you too, she never did get a fully detailed report the way i did it now:) )
My pleasure! You see how many people you were able to please with your report!

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #42 on: September 24, 2012, 01:21:31 AM »
We'll see about that, for now I'm happy to have it saved on my hardrive (and in the omnipresent cloud in case of catastrophe)
BTW sometime after me an australian group did the same thing and there was an article in the Sha'ah Tovah about it (IMO doesn't capture the full flavor of the experiance, prob because it was written by a reporter who's biggest hike was from the water cooler to his desk :)) )

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #43 on: September 24, 2012, 07:23:45 PM »
Part 3
About our trek

...Our schedule on a regular day was as follows: wake up with the sun (Mashgiach for the day wakes up an hour earlier to turn on fire, check eggs and flower etc.), get a bowl of hot water to freshen up (the closest we could get to a shower), Daven, eat breakfast. Then we would walk for 3-4 hours, stop for lunch, walk another 2-3 hours and arrive at the camp (even though this was only early afternoon, the weather tended to get nasty in the late afternoon). When it got dark we would have supper, socialize a bit in the dining room and go to sleep.

Just to add. When we arrived at the camp there would be tea at the mess tent. Though I'm not a big tea fan, this feature ended up being a lifesaver when the altitude got higher and the temperatures got lower. I don't know if you ever tried it but there is nothing like ginger tea to warm up a freezing body. You literally feel the heat radiating from the inside out.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2012, 08:05:34 PM by achasveachas »

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #44 on: September 24, 2012, 07:31:10 PM »

Part 4
Preparations
 
Usually the company takes care of everything, you just arrive in Nepal and they do the rest. Our group was more complicated because we were going Kosher. To avoid problems, we made up that we would have an only vegetarian menu, no meat, no milk and no fish (except canned tuna), and we would come to Nepal a few days early to go shopping with the cook and guide for basic ingredients and a new set of dishes. During the trek we would take turns being Mashgichim.
The other issue was Shabbos. Turned out not to be an issue, being that as mentioned, anyone trekking in high altitudes needs to take a few breaks to acclimatize. So all we had to do was arrange that the acclimatization days should be on Shabbos.

As arranged we arrived in Nepal a few days early the trekking company gave us a list of ingredients that they would need, and we sat with Rabbi Lifshitz who told us which ones were available locally, which we could buy at the Beit Chabad and which we would have to forgo. We then went shopping with the guide and the cook. We bought everything we needed for the 2 week trek and packed it up to be carried to the town of Lukla where we would begin the trek (we were going to fly there but we couldn’t fly all the supplies, it came out cheaper to hire porters to carry it for 4 days).
We then spent an amazing Shabbos in Kathmandu. Rabbi Lifshitz runs an amazing Seudas Shabbos with over 100 rough Israeli backpackers tied around his left pinky.

We spent a few days hanging out in Kathmandu and on Wednesday were ready to start.


Part 5
The actual trek

Day 1 – Wednesday
Lukla (2,860 m) – Ghat (2,530m)

We woke up bright and early to catch our 7:00 flight. We got to the KTM domestic terminal. If I thought the international terminal was rather dillapited and 3rd word, I guess I should have waited to see the domestic terminal. The place was one big hanger with one room which served as ticketing area, check-in area, luggage drop off and waiting area.

As soon as you come in of course you go through security. When I saw the antique metal detector and x-ray machine I decided for the heck of it to leave my camera, wallet, keys etc. in my pocket. Sure enough nothing beeped as I and 3 other people walked through at the same time.

Porters took our suitcases to ancient scales (the kind they have in old fish markets, just bigger). Here they displayed some common sense and instead of weighing each piece separately they put all of our luggage onto the scale at the same time (they were probably only concerned with whether the tiny plane would be able to carry it all). Once we were checked in by the agency representatives we were directed to the waiting area (sorry no lounge here).

As an aside; flights to Lukla are a very risky business, the flight schedule is erratic and depends heavily on the weather in the mountains which can change within minutes. I’ve spoken to Israelis who were stuck in the airport for a week at a time trying to get a flight. But being that Nepal is prob one of the more corrupt countries around, I can well imagine that a few dollars from a well-funded agency can set wheels moving smoothly.

When our flight was called (we were the first flight of the day), we walked out to the tarmac and met our plane face to face. A twin otter with fixed wheels and 2 propellers and 15 folding chairs inside. The porters started loading our luggage into every available empty space (some even went into the nose!) as we boarded, a sweet stewardess walked down the barely existent aisle, handing out mints (free! Spirit has who to learn from  ). I got the front seat and had a clear view into the cockpit (not very reassuring to see a GPS receiver duck taped onto the windshield). After saying Tefilas Haderech with more Kavanah than I ever had by Ne’ilah the plane took off. The flight itself was beautiful with snowcapped mountains on all sides, and everyone seemed to calm down a bit. That’s until we started our approach into Lukla.

Lukla airport is built into a mountainside with a 450 meter runway that has a 12% gradient (in plain English that means the runway goes uphill!) at one end there is a steep cliff and the other end is near the bottom of a steep mountain side. Miss it once and there’s no second chance for a turnaround. The History Channel rated it the most dangerous airport in the world!

As mentioned I had front row seats. I watched the whole landing through the pilot’s windshield! We landed safely B”H. The airport is tiny, theres only room for about 4-5 planes in it, and being that for most of the day the weather isn’t safe enough to take off and land so they need to maximize the bit of precious time they have. So there is constant activity going on; planes land, unload, reload and fly off. All the while trying to get out of the way of incoming and outgoing traffic (check out this video for a feel of how the place runs
).

So we disembarked. After a week in Kathmandu’s polluted air, the clean mountain air was an amazing relief. Everywhere you looked were mountains and more mountains. Our trek has begun!

We walked out of the airport, bypassing the “terminal” and all the porters by the gate looking for a job. Our guide brought us to a house where we Davened Shacharis and ate breakfast (sandwitches we brought from the Beit Chabad).

After spending some more time getting our stuff together we started walking. We passed the whole length of the village of Lukla (Elevation 2,860 m), passing all the shops and lodges (we even passed a fake Starbucks). Upon leaving Lukla the path went downhill and we descended into a valley walking along the river. I forgot the Nepali name but it meant “River of Milk” because the minerals in the water a milky color.

The first days walk was mostly downhill (it was the only day we had a net descent until we would be on our way back), and we only walked for like 2-3 hours (guess they wanted to start us off easy). We arrived at the campsite in a village called Ghat (Elevation 2,530m). Being that we camped so early and the weather was really nice, we decided to take a small walk down to the river. The water really did look milky, and it flowed really strong, there was an old rope bridge crossing it but we had to wait for 2 cows to finish crossing before we could make our attempt. After exploring a bit more we got back to the camp, had sort of an orientation to get to know the porters and other staff who would be with us, and after a delicious supper went to sleep.

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #45 on: September 24, 2012, 07:48:38 PM »
19. Security at KTM
20. Loading the plane
21. Note the opening in the nose, a few suitcases went there

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #46 on: September 24, 2012, 07:50:48 PM »
22. The cockpit
23. The view from the plane
24. Lukla Airport (note the plane coming up from the uphill runway)

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #47 on: September 24, 2012, 07:53:42 PM »
25. First few of mountains in Lukla
26. Starbocks

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #48 on: September 24, 2012, 07:54:58 PM »
28-29. Some views from the first day
30. Sharing the path

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #49 on: September 24, 2012, 07:56:17 PM »
31. Our camp at Ghat
32. A house in Ghat

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #50 on: September 24, 2012, 07:57:18 PM »
33-34. I was scared to cross this bridge till I saw them cross (note the milky water)

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #51 on: September 24, 2012, 11:44:20 PM »
These pictures are really cool! Did you have a special guide with you or the porters were the guides as well? Who was in the staff?

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #52 on: September 25, 2012, 12:00:24 AM »
If I recall correctly, we had a guide, a cook, 2 kitchen hands and 6 porters.
The Israelis we spoke to were all  :o

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #53 on: September 27, 2012, 12:59:16 PM »
Traveling today so hopefully I'll have time for 1 or 2 more chapters.


Day 2 – Thursday
Ghat (2,530m) – Monjo (2,850m)

Woke up refreshed (this wasn’t going to last long), and after Shacharis and breakfast continued our walk. The walk today was more or less the same as yesterday; continued in the valley through scenery of terraced fields and small Nepali villages. We crossed the river back and forth a few times on rickety hanging bridges. After about 3-4 hours walk we arrived at our camp in Monjo. Most trekkers trek all the way from Lukla to Monjo on the first day, I guess they wanted us to take it easy.

When we got to the camp we had lunch. Our guide was having a hard time getting used to our group (guess he’s never done a jewish group before) but we were teaching him fast; the first Hebrew word he learned was Balagan (followed by Schmuk as a very close second).

Over lunch we discussed the plans, tomorrow we would have a pretty big ascent to Namche, so to help us acclimatize better he suggested that after lunch we take a hike up a nearby hill to catch some views. So we Bentched and packed up and started a climb up a nearby hill. For the first time I was able to feel the effects of the thin air; it’s hard to describe but you feel like your breathing ad breathing and not accomplishing anything. When we got to the top all huffing and puffing I remember being surprised to see a hut up there, when I asked the guide “you mean people live this high up?” he laughed (over the next few days we’d see people living up double the altitude).

The views as it turned out weren’t that great; it was getting late in the afternoon and clouds were settling over the mountains, after resting up for half an hour we started our hike down, and arrived at our camp just on time for supper.

Over supper our guide briefed us on what we would do over the next day. It would basically be a steep 500 meter climb to the town of Namche. The town of Namche is basically the “capitol” of the area, and was a very popular stop on the route to Everest. That’s where we would stop for our first acclimatization day. He also warned us that starting tomorrow we could expect to feel the effects of the altitude, when we asked us what he meant he said “for one you are all going to become grouchy” to which we all had a good laugh. As it turns out that comment seemed to have the opposite effect, from then on whenever one of us started getting moody or cross we would all joke that now the grouchiness was starting… This bit of humor seemed to offset it.

Of course the next day being Friday we were worried if we would get to Namche with enough time to prepare for Shabbos but the Guide assured us that we would arrive before lunch which would leave us plenty of time.

So at that we went to rest up for our hard day tomorrow.


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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #54 on: September 27, 2012, 01:00:35 PM »
35-36. Some scenery from the second day

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #55 on: September 27, 2012, 01:03:23 PM »
37. views from the hike we took
38. at the top (note the hut). behind the clouds there are supposed to be really nice mountains.
13. our camp in Monjo

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #56 on: September 27, 2012, 05:05:26 PM »

Day 3 – Friday
Monjo (2,850m) – Namche (3,440m)

Wake up, Davening with the sun, breakfast and we were ready to go. As soon as you go out of Monjo there’s the entrance to Sagarmatha National Park, Sagarmatha is the Tibetan name for Mount Everest, and the national park was created to protect the area. We waited a bit for our guide to take care of formalities (going into the park has a fee and visitors have to leave a copy of their passport), then went in. The first thing you notice is the abundance of trees; it’s illegal to chop wood in the park, so while the rest of the area is heavily deforested in the park the trees made a comeback.

We continued hiking along the river, crossing a few bridges back and forth, all the time going mostly downhill (which in a way was bad knowing that every step downhill we would soon be doing up, at a much steeper grade). Until we came to a spot where 2 rivers met. After crossing one bigger bridge we started the 3 hour climb to Namche. We were basically climbing up a face of a mountain side on a series of switchbacks, climbing higher and higher. The whole time feeling like we had to fight for each breath.

Of course we stopped often to rest. It didn’t help our morale when every once in a while we had to move to the side to let a porter in flip flops carrying 60 kilos pass. At one of the switchbacks we stopped to rest and our guide pointed to some mountains in the distance and gave us our first view of Mt Everest! A barely discernible bump amongst a few other mountains (because of its location, Everest was never the most prominent mountain in our view, it always seemed to be overshadowed by Lotse, the 4th highest mountain in the world though her proximity to Mt Everest usually leaves her in the shadow of her big brother, pun intended).

After the initial excitement and flurry of pictures we were on our way again and after another hour or 2 we arrived at the village of Namche. If we thought we would be able to rest our legs now and take a deep breath we were wrong, Namche is built into the side of a mountain and the hotel we would be staying in over Shabbos was all the way on top. So after another tiring half an hour we finally made it to our “luxury” accommodations.

The hotel we stayed in, though by no means luxurious by the standards most of you imagine. It did offer some amenities that made it very attractive to trekkers
after a long week. For 300Rs you could take a hot shower (there was only one so there was quite a line), for 100 Rs you could use the internet for 15 minutes and for 150Rs you could recharge your electronics (camera batteries run out really quickly when they get cold, we were told to take them out of the cameras at night and put them in the sleeping bag with us). Before you laugh keep in mind that the hotel we stayed in the second Shabbos we didn’t even have that!

We were shown to our rooms that featured a sit-down toilet in each room, and views to die for. After settling in we had lunch. During lunch our cook came over and wanted to know what would be on the menu for Shabbos (we explained to him previously that all food would have to be ready before sundown on Friday night). We realized right away that our Seudas Shabbos would be a little different than what we were used to, but we improvised (think Yossi &Laibel: Peanut butter & Jelly for Shabbos). We even told him how to make Cholent (Though in hindsight maybe we should have been more specific with the recipe).

After lunch we went to our rooms to settle in, and lo and behold I found an electrical outlet next to the door to my room, a quick check confirmed that some of the other rooms had one so we saved ourselves 150Rs per camera battery right there (I’ll leave it to Yated to figure out if we were over on Ona’ah  :D ).

While everyone was settling in and lazying around I decided to go explore a bit, I met a few Yaks for the first time (they don’t like lower altitudes), saw a few Nepali kids playing soccer and as I continued towards away from the town I came to a cliff and came across what was probably the most amazing view of the whole trek. I was standing on a cliff with a straight view 1000 meters down to the bottom of the valley where you were just able to make out the river flowing, on the other side of the river a mountain called Thamserku rose about 3,000 meters above where I was standing. Further down the valley were a few more mountains, most notably Ama Dablam (Probably the prettiest mountain in the area and the most prominent one for most of the trek), and - further down at the end of the valley – Everest with its companions.

Obviously the words above cannot convey the feelings I had when I got to that cliff, for the first time in my life I understood what the phrase breathless scenery meant; I literally stopped breathing for a minute taking it all in. I just sat there on that cliff for 20 minutes thinking מה רבו מעשיך ה'.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the scene, I kept taking and taking only to delete them in frustration that my camera failed miserably to capture this beauty that only Hashem can make. Later I regretted it obviously, but that’s how I felt at the time (However I did manage to recreate a little of it in Google Earth (here http://goo.gl/maps/txJMW  the mountains to right of the center are: Everest in the middle with Lhotse and Nuptse to the right and left respectfully, the mountain to the left of the center is Ama Dablam if you scroll a bit due east is Thamserku (you might have to look up a bit to see the top)).

After about half an hour of just sitting and staring I came back to the hotel and started getting ready for Shabbos, got online for the shower, took 15 minutes to catch up with the world (and wasted 5 of those minutes trying to figure out how to find out wen Licht Benchen was at that end of the world) and relaxed until Shabbos.

Offline Achas Veachas

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #57 on: September 27, 2012, 05:11:35 PM »
39. Davening with the Sun in Monjo

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #58 on: September 27, 2012, 05:13:18 PM »
40-41. Crossing bridges, some bigger and some smaller

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Re: Everest Base Camp trek - Nepal TR
« Reply #59 on: September 27, 2012, 05:16:29 PM »
42. First view of Everest! (the bump in the middle)
43. Namche.
44. The view from our hotel room