Here is something I received today....very special! “Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of...

Today was the day, which culminated in the ascent to Everest Base Camp. Our day began again early from Labuche, our overnight stay. At 6h30 we had everything done; wake up, getting ready, breakfast and checking out of our lodge...pretty good going to begin with! To be honest, I did not have a great night and I continuously woke up. It was freezing in the morning and even the water bottles we use as provisions during the day and as additional heater for our sleep...

An early start to today's trek from Phortse to Dingbuche. Our guides woke us around 6am with the usual "washie washie" announcement and placed a metal bowl filled with hot water outside my room. Time to get up! Well, I was already awake for the past half hour or so and was just waiting for the call. I had a good night's rest like most of us, although cold temperatures would not necessarily guarantee that. I got up, the freezing cold air in the room was quite a co...

On top of the world - today we cracked the 5000m barrier (up to 5360m)! Our trip from Marchermo, our overnight stay was non-eventful, other than we began our trek towards our next target village in the snow and ice at -3 degrees! I hadn't first good night I'm days and after an immediate steep climb, we reached a plateau, which was magnificent to see! The mountains surrounding us were incredible and we had an opportunity to got our sight on the first 6000+m peaks...

What a difficult time for me! Besides the cold, rainy and snowy weather, I felt signs of altitude sickness.... which are not a joke! At one stage, I thought about leaving this behind and returning back to Katmandu. Imagine at night, you are lying in bed and just when you are passing out and transferring into lala land, someone squeezes your throat that you cannot get anymore air...this now happened every 2-3mins or so that I woke in an absolute panic, at some oc...