"A monk would never live like this." I said to Ellen.
"Take it easy." she calmly replied. "We only have two more nights."
It was the third day of our five day journey through southern Tibet to the Nepali border. We were at the Monastery Guest House. Ellen and I were sitting in the common room, or restaurant, of the place just 8 km from Mt. Everest Base Camp. We'd arrived here fifteen minutes earlier. I'd done a quick scan of the place. The steamy, overflowing outdoor toilets sat probably less than 5 metres from the kitchen. Our dormitory room wasn't heated. Neither was the common room where we sat. I picked up my Leon Uris novel, Redemption, and pretended to read.
"How can you read when you're shivering like that?" Ellen asked, seeing through my calmness. She'd brought along warm clothes for the trip. I made a quick calculation. I wouldn't be eating or using the toilet for the next 20 or so hours. And just 8 km from the mightiest of mountains, I'd seen all of it that I needed to.
"I'm going to bed. Wake me up when it's time to leave this place." I said. It was around 5:30 p.m.
At 2:00 a.m., I was awakened by Ellen rustling in her dorm bed that I'd pulled right up alongside mine. She was in a state of near panic.
"I can't breathe." she said.
"Stay calm, breathe in slowly, then out slowly. You'll be okay." I told her.
I knew what she was feeling. It had happened to me earlier when I was putting the beds together. At 5200 metres above sea level, simple tasks leave you feeling lungless.

The next thing I heard was Max, our fellow traveller, scraping the frost off our dorm room window.
"Ve must hurry. Ze sun vill soon rise over ze peak."
Ellen sat beside me, quickly lacing her shoes.
"You're going to walk 16 km back and forth to a mountain when just a few hours ago you couldn't breathe?" I asked.
"I feel fine now." she replied.
I pulled the covers over my head and quickly fell back into a deep sleep, dreaming of solid food and distant toilets.

The landscape west of Mt. Everest might be like the moon with snowy mountain peaks; the people who live there like a primitive version of the Flintstones. Once we stopped in a place to take photos. We hadn't seen anyone in perhaps an hour. As soon as our Land Cruiser came to a halt two children, maybe four years old, appeared as if they had crawled up out of the earth itself. You often see lone women, some close, some far off, walking the plateau with big wicker baskets strapped to their backs. They collect yak dung to burn in their stoves or sell to others. Once their baskets are full, they bag it and leave it by the side of the road for the men who come by in horse carts to haul it off. A good size yak patty or turd log, or whatever it's called, gives off about as much heat when thrown into the stove as the main section of Saturday's Toronto Star. But that's all they have to burn in this barren land. They seem content.

Ellen Yaks:

There were moments on the 8km walk to Everest Base Camp when my legs felt like jelly and I gasped for breath. I just wanted to lie down in the middle of the road and stay there. But if I did that I might be eaten by a yak and become yak dung in someone's stove. And I still wanted to see Vietnam, New Zealand and Fiji. So on I went.

At the foot of Everest, the mountain looks much smaller than expected but still ever so imposing. As I stood there looking at the top of the world, my legs suddenly felt stronger and my breathing was steady.

You may be wondering why anyone would subject themself to freezing temperatures, lousy food and disgusting toilets. The night before, as I gasped for breath, I wondered the same thing. Then I woke up in the morning, saw the bright blue sky and heard the mountain call. I decided that if I didn't make it to base camp, I wouldn't have accomplished what I came there to do. Was it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again. Never. Would I suggest it to anyone else. Probably not.