Back in Kathmandu (again) after returning a couple of days ago from the Everest base camp trek. This was a 13 day affair with the same company I'd done my previous Nepal trip with. It was a similar set up to last time with a dozen of us in the group with a Nepali guide and then a number of assistant guides and porters on the trek itself to do the donkey work. Any lingering worries about the dangers and pitfalls of trekking in a remote region at high altitude were allayed by the guide when it transpired he had done this trip "150 to 200 times before" and was a veteran of a number of the peaks in the region - no chance of getting lost then.The group itself was much more aussie dominated than any of the groups so far. The most aussie of which was a guy called Trevor who had also dragged along his teenage son Rhys. The behaviour of Trev was increasingly confusing Lee (who had come out from the UK for this trip) and I, especially towards 'Rhysie'. He seemed to ruffle his hair a lot, say things like 'good boy', stroke him, and generally treat him a bit like you would your pet dog. We never did really figure those two out. We also had a BNP activist from the UK (Lee and I suspected at least) who would often steer conversation around to immigration, teenage pregnancy, fox hunting, and even at one stage lamented the building of mosques in the UK. There was a father and son combination from Canada who I think had done their fair share of trekking before and who I liked to quiz on their grizzly bear encounters in the rockies. Apart from a few other relatively normal shelias, there was only one of the aussie contingent that proved of particular annoyance with her ridiculous use of the word 'so' at the end of each and every sentence.Day 1
We left Kathmandu early in the morning to catch the short 40 minute internal flight to the mountain village of Lukla, the starting point of the trek. The 'Yeti Airlines' plane was only a 14 seater and therefore worryingly small but we did however have on board a seemingly superfluous air hostess. Only after take off did her true role become evident, the plane door didn't close properly and she had to hold it shut!

Lukla airport is perched on the side of a cliff and given that there is not muchflat space up there the runway is designed to slow the planes down via gradient rather than length. This made the landing itself interesting to say the least as on the approach it looks like you are flying directly at a wall rather than a nice expanse of tarmac.

Like all the villages we would stop at on the trip, Lukla is only accessible by air or foot. This means that all the food, drinks, firewood, and general stuff has to be lugged up the trail by porters and therefore reflected in the prices - 80p for a porridge on that first morning, outrageous!

The rest of the first day consisted of our first bit of real trekking, 3 hours up the trail for an overnight stop at the village of Phakding (2610m). No signs of the altitude yet but what Phakding did do is give us or first taste of teahouse lifestyle. Teahouses are the name for the basic guesthouse/hotels for trekkers that line the trail and often have a common room with a fire stove in the middle (which is extremely popular when on) where you eat, and some decidedly unheated bedrooms and that's basically it. The evening's entertainment often revolved around a game of cards and I introduced a few of our group to Hearts which proved to be a popular for the remainder of the trip. Unfortunately the biggest drip of an aussie guy (not in our group) who was also staying in the teahouse had joined in and his ineptitude made the game a bit tedious. Even his polish/aussie hybrid dad who was playing with us slagged him off describing him as "a nice lad but he doesn't know how to think".

Day 2

Leaving the drip behind we headed off on a 6 hour walk (and now very much more uphill) to the town of Namche Bazaar, the administrative centre of Khumbu region and a slightly more lofty 3440m. During most of the day we were walking through a semi blizzard which made things a bit chilly and a bit worrying in terms of visibility for views for the coming days. Not much time in the afternoon to have much of an explore so after being called a 'bad man' by a local shopkeeper for deciding not to buy a walking stick she was selling, it was another night of cards in the teahouse. Lee, who had flown out from the UK to also do this trip, took over from the drip at cards with some highly bizarre decision making (blaming it on the altitude). As the evening wore on I started to get the first signs of a headache which looked as though was down to the altitude, hardly a promising sign given that base camp is a full 2000m higher than Namche.

Day 3
Woke up in the morning to a 1 degree Celsius bedroom having been up and down all night putting more and more clothes on to stay warm. After Lee had given me a blow by blow account of his dubious bowel movements, we had to get ready for a walk up the hill next to the town. This third day was reserved for acclimatisation and involved going up to a height of 3700m and then coming back down to the town to spend another night, a good way to get you accustomed to the thinner air. The town was caked in snow after the previous day's blizzard which made for some nice photos and we also got our first glimpse of Everest down the valley we were due to walk down.

Day 4
The room was less like a fridge when we woke up, with the previous night's sub zero temperatures probably largely down to the snow that had fallen and had now melted. It seems as though my headache had now set in and my 'de-acclimatisation' was now complete! We set off trekking down the valley and ended up dodging marathon runners along the path. It was the day of the Everest Marathon which had crazy guys running down all the way from Everest base camp to Namche Bazaar in one morning. Everyone else seemed to be impressed but personally I thought they were a right bunch of losers - its all downhill. We lunched at amusingly entitled village of 'Mong' from which we lost the first of our group to altitude sickness. Shireen, one of the numerous aussies, was having a tough time and had to descend with one of the assistant guides. She had been due to try and catch up with the group but ended up having to head back to Kathmandu.

The end point for the day was a place called Phortse which stood at 3800m in a teahouse owned by a sherpa who has summited everest. The cold was starting to tell now, and although the common room was kept warm by the Yak dung fueled fire, I had to resort to having 7 layers between me and the outside world to stay warm in bed.

Day 5 Minus 2 in the room in the morning and first signs that things are starting to freeze (bit of a struggle getting the toothpaste out the tube). We had a fairly long walk up another 600m elevation wise to the village of Dingboche which is in the shadow of the attractive looking Ama Dablam mountain and Lhotse which is the world's 4th biggest at 8500m ish.

Day 6
The second of our acclimatisation days and followed a similar format to the last one with a walk up a hill next to the village and then coming back down to sleep. My headache was now getting worse but could still be controlled by copious amounts of paracetamol. As a result I didn't follow Canadian Dave and Lee who went right to the top of the hill (about 5100m), which is probably just as well and on their way down Dave almost met his end after being charged at by a rogue Yak which particularly unfriendly horns. Shortly after and back at the teahouse Rhysie was looking a bit pale and ended up puking all over the floor in the common room. This meant it was time to part with another member of the group as he had to leave to go down. I started myself on the Diamox that night to try and help the altitude sickness and the increasingly annoying headache, which was getting a bit uncomfortable and not very conducive to a great deal of sleep. Diamox is a drug that is supposed to help your body cope with the affects of altitude by regulating your breathing a bit but it also makes you wee more. This wouldn't usually be too much of a problem but in the middle of the night when you have to go through the rigmarole of getting out the numerous sleeping bags, sleeping bag liners, blankets etc and then finding your way down a pitch black corridor in sub zero temperatures - it becomes a bit of a pain. Lee and I discussed at length the merits and dangers of using a plastic bottle inside the sleeping bag. With only a 500ml bottle available, the fact that the human bladder can hold up to a pint and a quarter (which is in the region of 650ml), and that the angle the bottle would have to be held at when lying down would prevent full use of the 500ml, meant we decided that the dangers did outweigh the benefits.

Day 7

After a horrible night's sleep we set off the next morning for a fairly hard walk up the valley to Lobuche (4900m) which would be our launching pad for the trek straight to base camp.

Day 8
It was a 5am wake up call on day 8 and a bedroom temperature of minus 6 (which doesn't sound too bad I know but try lying still in it for 12 hours) to gear up for the long trek up to base camp itself. I had deteriorated during the night feeling particularly ropey and the headache was now of biblical proportions. After forcing down some porridge and wearing as many layers as is possible whilst retaining the ability to walk, we set off at first light for the long trek up to Everest Base Camp at 5300m. After about an hour or so of walking I met my end at the first real hill of the day, finally giving in to the affects of the altitude. After collapsing over a rock and almost puking I declared to the guide Raj that "I think I'm in a pretty bad way". When he wandered over and said "Chris your face is blue" we both came to the swift conclusion that it was game over Atkins - time to go down. It just goes to show that the altitude can affect anyone, even double hard people like me.Raj arranged with one of the porters 'Mingma' to walk me back down the valley and for me to then meet up with the rest of the group back in the town of Namche 48 hours later. I was a little confused by Mingma's initial disappointed reaction to this news especially as he was carrying 3 rucksacks up the mountain and would now be able to swap this for one rucksack and a downhill walk. It was only after I gave him some of my raisin & biscuit Yorkie bar an hour or so later did he perk up much. Given that I had given up quite early in the day it gave us the opportunity to go down quite a way before stopping for the day. We walked back for 5 or 6 hours to the village of Tengboche which was at 3800m, a full 1200m below the blue face incident. After an afternoon nap in Tengboche my headache and general badness had all but disappeared.

Day 9After a breakfast of muesli and hot milk and a chapatti with honey, Mingma and I continued our march back to Namche and the sancturary of 3440m. Mingma assured me that it would be a flat walk on this day but I had been in Nepal long enough to know that Nepali flat means anything but. Again looking a bit glum I decided to brighten Mingma's mood with chocolate again by giving him my penultimate snickers bar. This proved to be a bit of an error as his body was clearly unaccustomed to processing this quantity of sugar as his walking pace quickened considerably leaving me floundering.Arriving in Namche well ahead of schedule I had almost 24 hours to kill before the rest of the group to catch up. Rhysie was there after his descent of a few days previous so I beat him at cards a few times before heading out to sample the delights Namche had to offer. Being the last point resembling civilization on the base camp road, you can get hold of pizza, chocolate cake, and real coffee in Namche. No prizes for guessing how I spent the rest of the afternoon.Day 10After whiling away the morning eating pizza, chocolate cake, and drinking coffee, the assistant guides Jambo and Bibek from our trip that were in town took Rhysie and I on a walk out to the nearby village of Khumjung. You only go to Khumjung to see one thing - the alleged Yeti skull. The enterprising head priest of the local monastery there has a supposed skull of the elusive yeti in a cabinet which you are not allowed to get a look of until after you have made a donation. It is quite blatantly an outrageous fraud as the box the 'skull' is in is half covered up by a cloth so you can't see it properly and it still has a full head of hair! The guide Raj is very much a skeptic and reckons it is at best the head of a wild boar or something.Later that afternoon the rest of the group returned and I was provided with the stories of base camp (it was cold) before thoughts turned to beer and Namche's only real bar 'Club Paradise'. Raj the guide had told me about some nutty scouse bloke that was living in the area and spending his time wandering around the mountains with his camera looking for yetis; I was delighted to discover he was resident in the bar that evening. Lee and I quizzed him about yetis but he was much more interested in talking about Nepali politics, his plans to seek political asylum in Nepal from the UK (yes, I haven't typed that wrongly), and become what he hoped would be 'the first British Gurkha in the Nepalese army'. He was a bit of a mental.

Day 11 - 13

The following 3 days were largely dull and involved us retracing our steps down the trail back to Lukla from where we were able to flying back to Kathmandu. The conversation seemed to revolve almost exclusively around food and in anticipation of the first shower in 2 weeks.

I'm heading back to India tomorrow, first to Mumbai and then on to Bangalore for a few days before flying back to the UK on the 23rd. Will attempt a photo upload now but the internet here in Nepal is a bit 1997 so it may have to wait until Bangalore.