Everest base camp trek - the beginning

Forgive the lack of photos - I'll have to use the power of the internet's imagination here... 

After spending a nervous hour and a half waiting for our flight to Lukla at Kathmandu domestic airport - another EBC-bound couple at the airport got delayed a day - we boarded the hang-glider 30-seater prop plane and took an exhilarating flight up to Lukla (2800m). Given that a plane crashed on a similar flight up to Lukla a few weeks ago, we were a little apprehensive about landing (which is probably like this - I can't view the video so fingers crossed it's relevant). We landed successfully and our pilots were congratulated with a round of applause. Our first day of the trek involved picking up a porter at Lukla, which our guide Chandra did for us (he makes everything a LOT less stressful), and taking the 8km downhill trek to Phakding (2600m-ish) past Sherpa villages, buddhist stupas and tibetan prayer flags (except we had more trees than in that photo). The menus at Nepali tea-houses includes momos (tibetan dumplings, mmm), daal bhat (rice, lentil curry and veg), fried spuds, chow mein and sometimes Nepali stabs at Western dishes like pizza or lasagne. Good, hearty, carbo-loading food. Mmm. 

The next day (aka today) we ascended 800m to Namche Bazaar (3440m, 400m below the top of Aoraki/Mt. Cook), across a suspension bridge built by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay (says Chandra). Most of the day was flat, through a green river valley, until we hit a HUGE cliff hill up to Namche. Namche is like a ski resort in the Alps with a German bakery, internet cafes and endless clothes shops - the last taste of civilisation until we descend! Internet is NZ$13/hour, but I suppose they have to carry the internets up/down by hand as trucks can't get up here and the tubes are narrow...



Tomorrow we have an acclimitisation day before heading any higher. I don't feel any symptoms of altitude sickness yet (headaches, 'drunken walk', loss of appetite and gut problems) so fingers crossed this stays away. This might be the last post for a while as we head further into the remote reaches of the Himalayas, so namaste until then!