Rendezvous With Mt Everest Base Camp

I heard candid call of mountain and this time it was journey of life time, the Mt. Everest Base camp. Each Himalayan trek transforms my soul and churns each mitochondrion (The Energy cell of human) from my mundane though exciting chemical engineering. Nepal has been privileged to have the tallest and mighty monolithic black rock encapsulated with snow and ice-The Everest and I feel lucky to touch the base of Sherpa's kingdom. The journey enthrals from Lukla to Gorakhshep amidst vivid flora and fauna at each corner and hillocks.

Altitude: 18500 ft., Temp: -12 Deg. C

I reluctantly but mechanically arose cocooned in 5 layers of cloth from Gorakhshep lodge (last village before Everest) and set off to assess the conditions for the final assault of Kalapatthar, by 3 AM my leader and I started our final climb. As we moved, we kept ourselves warm but fingers and toes stung with the cold. We skirted a series of frozen pools on flat snow-covered ground. My head torch was soon redundant as light gleamed off the mountains and every frozen surface. 

But, in the shadow of the world's greatest giants it would be nearly three hours before the Sun would hit us directly and provide us with some much needed warmth. We plodded along, at once fighting the cold, straining to climb, watching our feet on slippery rocks and breathing in deeply the rarefied air. This takes equal measure discipline and spirit. Again, the path we crossed is hillocks, boulders and glacial till. 

As a disheartening consequence most of my climbing was followed by a near equal descent. This continued for, perhaps, two hours: constant ups and downs interspersed with steep and precarious patches, slippery rocks and exposed difficult stretches, my pace was slow but the altitude takes its toll along with bone rattling cold, paused my motion to take halt after every 15 steps, after 2.5 hrs. I perched on black rock completely festooned with prayer flags to see the highest mountain ranges of earth namely:

Mt Everest (29029 ft.)

Mt Lhotse (27940 ft.)

Mt Nuptse (25790 ft.)

Mt Changtse (24870 ft.)

Mt Pummori (23954 ft.)

Mt Ama Dablam (22493 ft.)

The 360 Deg panorama was one of my best moments of life after summiting, Mt Everest Base camp (17500 ft.), Kalapatthar (18500 ft.) and Chukung RI (18196 ft.) {Base of Mt. Lhotse}

Everest Base camp was on my 2nd in Bucket list (out of 10) since last 3 years and I am happy that I have successfully accomplished in expected time frame, before this trek I prepared by trekking to Roopkund lake, Uttarakhand (16500 ft.) in 2012 to have flavour of high altitude trekking, thanks to my Royal Enfield ride to ladakh/Khardungla in 2011 too.

Difficulty: Trekking to Base of Mt Everest is of medium difficulty except for the long duration/days of trekking, the biggest challenge is to be fit till the last ascend, normal most of Indian treks takes 5-6 days to reach base camp of any trekkable summit whereas in Everest region it takes 8-9 days to just reach base and eventually 4-5 days to return healthy, one shouldn't be startled to find rescue choppers shuttling Kathmandu-Everest base camp-Kathmandu saving scores of life of trekkers and mountaineers arriving for expeditions (they cost exorbitantly high).

We started our Trek from Kathmandu on 1st Oct and were back to Kathmandu on 14th Oct, the most scary part of whole journey is flight from Kathmandu to Lukla (Lukla airport is only 400 mts long) and locked by high mountains, the airport is rated as most dangerous airport in world and has many instance of accidents every year, as my friend told once like Gods call, Mountains do call you, if one doesn't have luck and call from Mt Everest it's very difficult reaching there, and this was proved by innumerable Americans and Europeans waiting for Lukla flight at Kathmandu airport, the flight ply between 8 AM to 1 PM only due to hostile mountain weather and one has to be extremely lucky to get flight on same day, our luck charm also helped on last 5 days of trek as it drizzled on first 5-6 days, but as we arrived nearer to Lap of Mt Everest, weather got cleared to give glance of Sagarmatha/ Chomolungma or Mt Everest.

The 13-14 days journey to the lands of highest mountain ranges was of 130 Kms, We trekked on average 7 -12 hours per day, it took 3-4 months to prepare and finalize the plan, though a week before leaving for trek, I had injured my knee in local train, but I recovered from it and fortunately had no pains across 13 days.

Every time I look onto all photographs, I only wish Mt Everest should have been named after Radhanath Sikdar (an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal) who was first person to identify Mt Everest, incidentally it was named after George Everest, or else I would have gone for trek to MT Sikdar Base Camp.

I saw a quote written on a mountaineering equipment shop in Kathmandu.

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware." – Martin Buberng

The Journey to Epic Mountain evolved a new life in me and stirred my sallying heart and longing eyes which will perhaps linger till aeons!!