Tori James: This is the Everest 2007 team, with our podcast,
sponsored by Find.co.uk!
So we're one day into the trek to Everest base camp, we flew from Kathmandu
to Lukla yesterday, in a very small Cessna plane, I think it was. And yesterday
we started walking on a single track, not made for cars or vehicles or anything
like that, just for pedestrians, for locals, for trekkers: it's not smooth,
it's rocky, dusty, bumpy, undulating. There are yaks coming towards you and
it's really important that you step outside of the way for the yaks to get
past you. There are also many, many roped bridges along the way, in fact
maybe the highlight for most of the trekkers are these huge bridges which
cover a great expanse from one side of the river bank to the other and it's
not a quiet river – I don't know if you can hear behind me in the background
but it's absolutely roaring torrents of water that's coming down from the
high Himalaya, and which we'll see more of as the gorge that we're walking
in slowly narrows, and I imagine it will get louder and louder at some point
in our trip. Last night we stayed in our first tea house, the Namaste tea lodge: it's the first tea house en route,
up the Khumbu valley, and I was really pleasantly surprised. The tea houses
are notorious for being smoke-filled rooms, if you like, because of the log
fires that they're burning. And we walked in to a lovely little dormitory,
which was probably the nicest thing I've stayed in here, in either Nepal
or Tibet, and we were fed last night with various things: rice, vegetable
curries, chips. Other people had pasties and spring rolls, and momos which
are dumplings stuffed with cheese or vegetables. So we had a great first
night and I'm pleased to say that we all had about eight or nine hours sleep
which is absolutely fantastic and we'll hopefully be getting lots more sleep
during the trek to make sure that our bodies don't become tired and exhausted.
[Sound of running water & background talking]
Just crossing stepping stones across a small stream here. There are huge
boulders which are breaking up the flow of the river; we're now on an island
in the middle of it, if you like. Quite warm today; I've got a white shirt
on, a long sleeved shirt to try to keep me as cool as possible, and I've
also got a wide-brimmed hat & sunglasses. You can feel though that the air
temperature is actually quite cold, and if the sun were to go in you'd definitely
need a fleece. It's amazing; there are loads of different trekking groups
walking up the Khumbu valley, and on my right here we've got a tarpaulin
laid out with marmalade and peanut butter and jam, and sugar for tea and
coffee; and that's the rest stop that's been set up for one of the trekking
groups that will be somewhere along the trail behind us.
[Sound of running water, and wind]
We're crossing [exclamation] the highest bridge we've been over so far,
and it is a case of don't look down. There are prayer flags fluttering from
one edge of it. The water below us is that lovely kind of greeny-blue colour
that you get in glacial mountains [sound of strong gusts] and now for a very
steep descent from the bridge.
We've just seen Everest for the first time. It's day two of the trek and
it's quite far away at the moment; about seven kilometres, Omar's said... oh,
seventy, that makes more sense... and what's interesting is that there's a
peak, also in our view, that looks bigger than it because it's closer, so,
[laughs] so, actually... it doesn't look that big – but I'm sure it will do
in a few days.
So it's the second morning of our hike to Everest base camp and I'm standing
in a huge ravine, a gorge, with a deeply cut valley, with a raging river
down at the bottom there: I don't know if you can hear that in the background.
The tea lodge that I'm in is literally balanced on the side of the cliff-face;
the toilet actually overhangs the cliff-face. And along from this tea house
are several others scattered with Himalayan prayer flags; there is wood smoke
drifting from all of the chimneys in the breeze. And the sun is strong, it's
only twenty past eight in the morning; the sky is blue and in the background
behind me I can just see the peaks of some snow-capped mountains. At the
moment though we're still in an area where we have fir trees clinging to
the rocks, so gradually as we work our way up to Everest base camp we'll
lose this. One of our trekkers is here, just having a wash outdoors [sound
of water]; there's no indoor washing facilities – we have to come outside
to do the washing.
Behind me you've got Everest, we're at the Everest View Hotel, just above
Namche Bazaar, and it's the one with the wispy bit of cloud on top. It seems
kind of unreal that we are going to be attempting to climb that in a couple
of weeks' time. But it's kind of like any mountain really: when you first
set your sight on it, you think wow, I'll never get to the top of that, or
that's a long way, or it looks really high! And I'm just thinking of Everest
in the same way really as I thought of Cho-Oyu, and the same way that I think
of peaks in north Wales, or wherever, you know. When you're at the bottom,
of course it's going to look challenging, and look hard: it's a long way
up. But there's our first view and we know what it's going to take. We're
making the most of this lovely, lovely weather en route into Everest base
camp. The air is quite cool but the sun is beating down on us, hence the
sun hat, and I'm going to just prepare myself for the temperatures of -15
or so that we're going to have at base camp. The trekkers are absolutely
fantastic; keeping us entertained in every possible way and they'll be coming
all the way with us to base camp.
[Water, yak bells & whistling]
We've just crossed over a large, large bridge, spanning a ravine and a
herd of yaks has just gone by and now it's their turn actually to cross the
bridge, and what's quite amusing [laughs] is that Ben is half way across
the bridge, and you're not meant to pass yaks on the bridge, so he'd better
hurry up. He hasn't seen yet ... what is he going to try and do?? The herdsman's
going to try to stop the yaks ... but he's going to need to hurry up because
otherwise he's going to pass a yak on the bridge. [Pause]. Oh god ... I'm just
watching, and hoping, that the yak isn't going past Ben because the bridge
is quite narrow and I don't want a yak's horn to get stuck on his rucksack
or anything, otherwise it could be a nasty little jostle on the bridge. OK,
they're going past, OK ... no yak encounter for Ben, thankfully.