EVEREST BASE CAMP

Here we are. An other of my impossible travel dreams is coming true. Today I am going to the Everest Base Camp (EBC). I left home almost 2 weeks ago hoping to make it here, but honestly I was pretty afraid that either the lack of training or the altitude sickness were going to stop me on the way. But they didn't stop me. So, today we (Jake, Lisa, Vishnu and I) will trek on the Khumbu glacier, and after 3 hours we will get up there where at 5,400 meters we should find a bunch of tents full of climbers ready to summit the 8,848 meters of the Everest. I read about so much about the Everest Base Camp. I read on papers and magazines and books. And I am really curious to see how it looks like ...

The EBC is located somewhere around 5,400 meters in the middle of the Khumbu glacier and the oxygen in the air is just 50% of the oxygen that you can find at sea level. And strange enough, even if you can see the Everest from pretty much anywhere during the trekking (i.e. it is the peak there in the background in this picture) ...... you can't actually see the Everest from the EBC itself. Anyways, you have lots of mountains to stare at. Here iare some of the pictures I took on our way to the EBC. Really a wonderful trekking ...

And here is the Everest Base Camp! Here is where the trekkers like me stop, and where the climbers start their hard work. This fall the camp is not very crowded. There is only one expedition attempting the Everest Summit. It is a Thai expedition, the first Thai expedition ever ...

hopefully they will make it. When we visited them, they told us that the Sherpas were preparing the Camp I. Basically for the classic expeditions, above the EBC, there are an other 4 more camps (i.e. Camp I, II, III, IV). The last one is at 7,900 meters and after few days of acclimatization, if the weather is good enough, the climbers start from the last camp climbing around midnight and in something like 10-14 hours, they need to reach the summit. If they can't make it in that time limit, they have to just U-Turn, otherwise the night can catch them too exposed up there in the mountains Really a risky job ... (the map with the EBC & the 4 other camps is from internet). Normally expeditions don't let trekkers like us in their tens, but the famous Thai hospitality is really withut borders! They showed us their tents, the kitchen and they even offer us a tea. Really nice guys. Definitely a free warm tea at the Everest Base Camp is something that I was not really expecting!