Day 9 - Gokyo 1st April

Rob's birthday today! We spent the whole day planning his surrise. We rose at an ok hour and set off on a two hour trek to Gokyo. We walked at first through a glacial trough until we climbed up over the side to be greeted by the first lake, although only small it was home to a family of ducks! After an hour walking along the morraine we reached lake 2, a vast frozen expanse of snow. 1 hour later we reached Gokyo and lake 3. Our lodge is pleasant though outhouse toilet may be fun in the night... Dinner was a hearty spaghetti and tomato sauce, delish! However in the Nepalese 10 minutes before dinner (1 British hour) i played so many games of clock patience i may have to kill myself if I lose another. After dinner was party time, Tenzie, our favourite porter, had baked an amazing cake (chocolate and coconut) with marmalade letters on top. We bought rob a mars, twix, kitkat, bounty, etc each, being all you can get 4 days from the nearest shop! The porters had clubbed together and bought a bag of cookies!

Day 8 - Machermo 31st March

Rest day!! Nothing to do except wake at the civilised time of nine and get hastily to avoid things dropping off in the cold. Breakfast was another debacle with a pancake that was more like bread, I was still hungry so I went for a rice pudding - bolied rice, except left in the milk it was boiled in and with added coconut chunks and almonds, very tasty!! After brekkie it was washing day so hair done, socks and pants done, all out the back of the lodge drying as a write this. We can smell lunch from the kitchen. After lunched we just chilled out and played cards.

Day 7 - Machermo 30th March

We left later than usual as it was only a three hour stint to Machermo. Breakfast was good after an amazing nights sleep. Scrambled eggs that tasted suspiciously like brioche and toast that looked and felt like it had been toasted for 10 seconds over a candle. The walk was a pleasant stroll across hilltops until we reached Machermo at half 12, just in time for lunch. Me and Sophie shared a macaroni cheese and a plate of momos. That afternoon it snowed!! Although it was our snow of the trip we were 4410m up we shouldn't be surprised. But we kitted up and went out to the IPPG (The International Porter Protection Group) AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) talk at the clinic here in Machermo. It was interesting and informative if not a little frightening looking at all of the symptoms. For dinner I ate a Ra-Ra noodle soup, which I thought would be safe seeing as it was a packaged noodle block, but by 'eck it was spicy. As the evening drew in my idiotic lack drinking gave me a smashing headache so I went straight to bed.

Day 6 - Dole 29th March

We rose early and played it safe with oat porridge for breakfast. We set out on our long trek to lunch, fortunately we met Claire, a doctor also going on her way to work at the clinic in Machermo, though she stopped before us, as she was doing the trip in three days rather than two. We also got out first sighting of Everest!! It felt surreal to be staring at the tallest thing on the planet! We stopped for lunch in a small hilltop town. Again I played it safe with tomato noodle soup. I also have found that Tash is to be my "mother" forcing me to finish every meal with threats to tell Charlie.* After that we made good progress to Dole arriving around 5. I had a nice chicken soup for tea that made me feel much warmer inside. We spent the evening teaching Dendi and the porters to play cheat but left out the wild cards to avoid blowing their minds.

*Charlie is Tash's sister in-law who works with my aunty.

Day 5 - Namche Bazaar 28th March

How could I forget the debacle over last nights dinner, the burgers with no meat, the lasagne that turned out to be a sandwich, Woke up feeling a bit better, we ate breakfast,  well everyone else did, I forgot to take my pills* and the stodgy apple pancake was too much to handle. So we left for an acclimatisation hike up into the hills above Namche via the Edmund Hillary museum. We returned for lunch of boiled rice and set out again in the afternoon for a browse, and we were reunited with Steps! Returning to the lodge in the late afternoon we ate dinner, spending the evening playing cheat until it was too dark to see.

*For those that didn't know I have to take 20mg of omeprazole every morning to avoid abdominal cramps and nausea.

Day 4 - Namche Bazaar 27th March

After a good nights sleep, we set off from our lodge at  8 and reached lunch at 11. After a good bowl of soup we left at 1 and spent a gruelling 2 and a half  hours walking up a tough hill... About half way we reached a narrow 30ft wide 50ft high bridge.

After waiting for the yaks to pass we scared ourselves as the bridge wobbled drunkenly over the river. During the day we adopted Steps as our team mascot, a small ginger dog who followed us from breakfast to the bridge where he turned back. After the bridge we climbed another two hours up a steep hill at one stop we were told we should be able to see Mount Everest, but it was too cloudy to see the summit. We arrived knackered at Namche, at about 4 thirty. I have now had a first hand experience of what shall now be referred to as "altitude bloating", where all of the gas in your gut expands as you ascend causing great pain, discomfort and nausea. The only way the medics think it will go away is to sleep on it so I lay in bed for the night and tried to sleep.

Day 3 - Pahkding 26th March

After an average nights sleep we woke early to get the second flight of the day at 10 past 8 however after arriving at the airport we were told it was too cloudy at Lukla and we would have to wait. 2 hours and several card games later we checked in but sat on the other side for 2 more hours. The flight itself was only about 30mins, but 30 mins of scary flying ending with a terrifyingly short runway ending in a brick wall. Due to the delay we arrived at lunch time and ate right away in a lodge run by a friend of Dendis. After a plate of rice we met our porters and set off... after our first injury. Luke had cut himself on a razor whilst checking his pack. After the fairly tough trek we arrived here and had a lovely meal, steamed vegetable momos and discovered that I will be drinking milk tea for the rest of the trip! (I should probably add here that all of the lodges had restaurant style service with menus and a wide variety of choices, much better that the hostel style they were portrayed as.)

Bonus Post!

Here are some of my photos from in and around Kathmandu when I first arrived!

Crazy traffic

The view from the roof (on a clear day, that's pollution not fog)

The chicken kiev!!

Some.... interesting statues...

Day 2 - Kathmandu 25th March

Breakfast was fine, we ordered last night to avoid the one hour delay. Started the morning with a visit to the hotels rooftop garden. Amazing views across the city (and lots of haze from the pollution), then we had a medical briefing in the sun. Next we headed out shopping and then to lunch, where we saw ourselves get overexcited at the sight of a chicken kiev in the shape of a chicken! Soon we headed back and spent the afternoon packing and changing our money (the guys at reception were very helpful and gave us a good rate on the rupees!). But after only two days I am sick of having to carry around monopoly money, at 107 rupees to the dollar. We had a lovely dinner in a touristy restaurant. (I have found a new favourite food chicken momos)

Hotel business card.

Day 1 - Kathmandu 24th March

Spent most of the day travelling, very exciting to see the mountains from the plane. Flight was quite good, managed to get some sleep. Stopover in Bahrain was fine, achieved very little other than starting my book. Arrival in Kathmandu was manic, people everywhere, huge culture shock. Met Dendi, very nice guy. Hotel is good not exactly 5* (not even 1*) but has everything you could need. Food left a lot to be desired but was edible. Worst part, being the only guests in the hotel meant a 1 hour wait for the food. As for the "new" money belt, it fell apart before we landed in Kathmandu, luckily Rob had a spare and I have now stolen that.

Ticket stubs from my outbound flights.

The story behind it all...

Back in Easter 2010, aged 15, I was the youngest member of a charity youth expedition to Everest Base Camp. Over the four weeks that I was out there I kept a diary, a lovely little hand-made card bound book with pressed leaves on the cover and held shut by a bamboo closure, about one A5 page for each day. I also included a little memento for each day relevant to that day or the trip as a whole. I have decided to share this with the world and relive my experiences of those weeks, by typing up a page of the diary every day. It includes the two weeks I spent trekking, the days in hospital after being airlifted off the mountain, and even a journey into the jungle. So stay tuned for the next month or so as i delve into my little brown book...