Coming back to the blog after more than a year I found an unpublished
draft and decided to finish it even though it feels a bit strange to edit a text I wrote such long time ago.
To my great joy I had many friends coming to visit me in Nepal. One of them, Meredith, is pure energy personalized, and thus we went on a trek to Everest Base Camp.
At 5364 m, Everest Base Camp is not permanent. At the time I was there it was inhabited by a Thai expedition waiting for good weather to make a second attempt towards the top.
Although Base Camp is only a tented camp is was vivid with life. There was a computer tent, a party tent playing music from the 70's, tea offered for all visited, campers digging around their tents, and climbers practicing on the ice fall next to the camp.
In order to acclimatize for the fast ascending trek it is a good idea go high and sleep low, i.e. never to sleep at the highest point of the day. Thus, every day we walked two steps up, and then one step back down again, or simply climbed view points.
Nice at is was to do this we had bad luck everytime we did climb a view point. We gad splendid weather for most of the trek, but never when we were at a view point.
Whenever me and Mere climb a mountain together we do as mush as we can by our own means. Thus, also this time we carried our bags ourselves. I have to admit though that we packed light, not even near the size of the porters' bags.
Not only do the porter have HEAVY (their bags, or rather baskets, often weigh more than 100 kg) bags, they carry them with the weight on the foreheads. I tried to lift one of them once, the one on the last picture, I did not even manage to move it. That rendered many laughs, until I nearly tipped it over. Had I done so they would have had to unpack it to get it up, that's how heavy it was. At that moment, yet again, I was just very happy I wasn't in their shoes, figuratively as well as literally since their shoes are most often nothing but flip flops.
Actually, the porters work under terrible conditions. Those working for a guide company and carrying the stuff for tourist are lucky. For them there are restrictions on how much they are allowed to carry, standard of equipment, hours walking per day etc. But for those working for the lodges it's much worse, and no one controls this, not even the trade union that actually exists for them. I am not proud of taking part of this, as I do just by being a guest at the lodges and eating their food. It always awakens thoughts on responsible trekking and is another reason I want the
next trek to be not in the most touristic area.
However, this was a beautiful trek in real good company. It turned out to be my last long trek in Nepal this time but I am certain I will go back for more treks, next time as I said off the beaten track(trek). Probably though, my next trek will be through the forests of Ituri in East DR Congo.
