DAY 11 Over to the busy airport early in the morning, the flights that arrive have a turnaround time of less than ten minutes. Our plane arrived on time, full of bags of grain, inside there are only six seats left but there is only a few of us. The flight out is fantastic, we sit at the start of the runway revving the engine with the brakes on, we expected a roller coaster ride, imagining the plane would dip down when the runway falls away before climbing up, ...

DAY 10 Namche Bazaar (3420m) to Lukla (2800m) A good start to the day at Breakfast, pancakes. They looked and tasted like giant drop scones all soaked in honey. We walked down out of Namche for three hours and passed many porters carrying loads to Everest base camp. The most popular month to summit is May and one of the most popular days in May is the 10th. The reason May is popular is because of the change in weather pattern. Normally the jet stream winds blo...

DAY 9 Dole (4090m) to Namche Bazaar (3420m) A day of walking back over old ground. We had a steep 400m ascent to start off through pine forest. Up to the Mong La pass and we entered the cloud level, walking through the clouds meant the visibility was reduced to 20m and finished any hope of a view. We walked a quick pace, helped with the obvious downward leading path, and noticed the miles were disappearing under our feet. We passed a village selling weird masks a...

DAY 7 Machhermo (4410m) to Gokyo (4750m) It had snowed overnight so we walked up in the snow passing an empty lodge, some fields and a couple of trekkers coming down. The path followed the milky river, and had been chipped out of the cliff face. At one section of the path, there was no path. The stone steps had fallen away, down to the river below. There was a team of men carrying new rocks down, to re-build the steps up. We were forced to scramble up in un-di...

DAY 6 Dole (4090m) to Machhermo (4410m) We woke to find out half our hostels inhabitants were staying in bed and the others groaning about aches and pains. It seems overnight we had turned into a hospital ward. The South African couple had the runs and so did the English guy. Tom was complaining about some chest pains through the night and was uncertain if he should keep pushing up higher. Everything should be in balance so on the other hand Kat and I had a great...