We were up at 4 am for a 5 am call time. It was pouring rain, which didn’t bode well for the planned flight to Lukla. To add to the bleary-eyed early morning confusion the hotel experienced one of the routine rolling blackouts that move throughout the city. Dovile and I finished packing by headlamp and then enjoyed our first of many early morning workouts in which it would take our combined strength to squeeze the porter bag closed and force the zipper around. We met the group in the lobby and then loaded up the van for the airport.

The domestic airport consisted of the same rubble, garbage, mangy-looking monkeys and stray dogs that characterized the rest of the city. It hadn’t yet opened so we joined the queue outside. Lucky for us, the rain had lightened up. Kevin was awake enough to observe one of the airlines was called Yeti.

“Their tagline should be ‘Yeti Airlines: We Do Exist!'” he quipped.

We passed through an initial security screening consisting of a baggage scan and pat-down and picked up our boarding passes. One thing unique to this flight is you have a weight limit to your carry-on bag. Each is weighed before a pass is issued. We emptied our water bottles beforehand for this reason.

Hey guys, whatcha playin’?

We went through a similar security procedure a second time to get to the terminal. Once inside we looked at the monitor. So far so good. Our flight was still scheduled to depart at 6:30, the weather must be better in Lukla.

Not long after we sat down, the screen flashed “delayed to 7:30” due to weather. Bummer. We settled in to play cards, read, or fiddle with our phones.

DK had told us earlier that the locals have a different idea of personal space than we westerners. We got a taste of this when a man walked up and began hovering nonchalant over the card game.

Define irony.
Photo credit: Kevin Cordova

7:30 became 8:30. 8:30 became 9:30. DK and Sudip were on the phone and said the weather forecast didn’t look good for the next two days. Rather than stay longer in Kathmandu and repeat this tedious morning ritual the next few days, we unanimously voted to try to hire a helicopter for an extra $200 each. By 11:30 our tickets had been exchanged. We got to leave that day AND we got to ride in a helicopter! The trip just got exponentially more awesome.

Our group wouldn’t fit in one helicopter so Mike, Sara, Kevin, Stacy, DK and I were to take the first flight. Ele, Amanda, Dovile and Sudip would follow in the second. The first six of us went out the back door of the terminal and then piled into a tiny, ancient pickup truck which embarked on a long, scenic drive through the airport to the helicopter landing pad.

From Left: Mike, Sara, Kevin, Stacy, Me, DK
Photo credit: Dan Keys

We got out of the truck next to a helicopter, took photos, and signed our lives away. Suddenly a whole crew of men showed up and started talking quickly in Nepali. Uh oh, what is going on?

DK tried to call the pilot, a Kiwi he knew named Jason. He told me that Jason was from Queenstown, and flew rescue missions during the climbing season so we’d be in good hands.

Speaking of rescue missions, it turned out that all the commotion was regarding a rescue. Someone up on the mountain wasn’t going to be able to make the walk down and we would have to leave our porter bags behind in favor of more fuel for the mission. The porter bags would go up with the next flight. (Note: This is why it’s a good idea to buy travel insurance. The rescue flight would have cost that person around $5,000.)

They got the fuel issue sorted, we loaded up the helicopter and took off. There were no seat belts or ear protection. Jason was kind enough to open his window for some A/C. We cruised over the colorful buildings of Kathmandu. From the air it seemed like there was a brick smelter on every street corner. On the edge of town we saw an interesting religious statue, big enough to be seen some distance away from the air, though no one knew what it was. After the statue we started to get into the hills, all terraced, still mostly dry and brown.

Surke

Eventually the hills got steeper, and greener. We flew into a gorge and were treated to little cascades on either side. My mind started to hum the opening tune to Jurassic Park, especially since we were approaching the most beautiful waterfall yet. Then, just like that, we landed right above it. Wow, really?? I was happier than a slinky on an escalator. (Woo hoo! This is awe-some!)

The extra fuel we brought in favor of the porter bags. They unloaded it in Surke to make the helicopter lighter for the flight up on its rescue mission. They’d stop and refuel on the way back down.

I knew we weren’t flying to Lukla, but I had a picture in my mind from the History Channel’s World’s Most Dangerous Airports of what Lukla would be like, and to me this place was a thousand times more beautiful. An organic farmer’s paradise. Surke. (7,513 ft. / 2,290 m). I thought we were already in the mountains, but DK would say later that these were just foothills. 10,000 ft. foothills. We were in the Himalayas!

“HimaYAYA!” Kevin would say. Perfect. It’s in.

Seriously, they don’t make them much cuter.
Photo credit: Eleanor Tresidder

The helicopter ride wasn’t exactly short, and I needed to find a toilet. They had one outside of the building and it turned out to be the first of many Asian style toilets I would encounter, and actually come to prefer, on the trail.

We went inside for the first tea break, milk tea (dude chiyaa) this time, and also enjoyed some ramen style noodles for lunch. In this tea house we met the first two of the world’s cutest dogs.

Gotta love those ears!

The dogs in Kathmandu, while still cute, tended to be mangy, dusty, and exhausted from barking all night. The dogs up in the mountains were healthy, soft, perky little hiking companions. We petted this skinny pup who was begging for a bit of our soup, while his cousin was outside getting rolled by helicopters and having the time of his life. The other dog would run around barking madly at the choppers taking off and landing and got blown around quite a bit in the process.

Eventually the others arrived, a little weak in the knees since their flight was a bit more exciting than ours, due to both pilot and weather. It was about 2 pm and daylight was becoming a consideration. Surke was about a mile or so below Lukla, our intended starting point, and we also arrived much later than originally scheduled. We had about 5 miles / 8 km to hike. We stayed long enough for them to have some tea and then hit the trail. Including today, it would take nine days of slow and steady acclimatization to reach base camp.

Prayer stone.  Look closely to see the good vibes radiating upward from the symbols.

Shortly after departing, DK and Sudip stopped us to give us the rules of the trail. Rule #1: Let animals pass cliff side to keep from being bumped down the side by a mule or yak. Sudip had learned this one the hard way and was kind enough to let us benefit from the experience. Rule #2: Always obey rule #1.

On the trail there would also be cultural rules to follow. Carved prayer stones were everywhere. So were prayer flags. The symbols carved or printed on each represented the sounds “Om mani padme hum” and repeated over and over. We were invited to invoke these sounds and asked to pass the stones on the left, keeping them on our right side. In villages we’d also pass prayer wheels. These were brass cylinders engraved with the same symbols that typically would be spun by hand, though occasionally we’d see one powered by water. We’d spin these toward the direction we were walking, clockwise, though the good energy would be sent in all four directions.

OM MANI PADME HUM is dedicated to the Great Compassionate Chen-resigs, [and] is found inscribed on prayer stones, prayer wheels, prayer flags, and wild rocks throughout the Buddhist Himalaya.

Pronounced in Tibet Aum–Ma-ni–Pay-may–Hung, this mantra may be translated: Om! The Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus! Hum! The deep, resonant Om is all sound and silence throughout time, the roar of eternity and also the great stillness of pure being; when intoned with the prescribed vibrations, it invokes the All that is otherwise inexpressible. The mani is the “adamantine diamond” of the Void–the primordial, pure and indestructible essence of existence beyond all matter and even antimatter, all phenomena, all change, and all becoming. Padme–in the lotus–is the world of phenomena, samsara, unfolding with spiritual progress to reveal beneath the leaves of delusion the mani-jewel of nirvana, that lies apart from daily life but at its heart. Hum has no literal meaning, and is variously interpreted (as is all of this great mantra, about which whole volumes have been written). Perhaps it is simply a rhythmic exhortation, completing the mantra and inspiring the chanter, a declaration of being, of Is-ness, symbolized by the Buddha’s gesture of touching the earth at the moment of Enlightenment. It is! It exists! All that is or was or will ever be is right here in this moment. Now!

Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

Prayer wheels.
Photo credit: Eleanor Tresidder

The trail started out green and misty. We walked through lush green organic farms, with beautiful stone walls and houses. I marveled at a shelter for some of the animals, in which even the roof was woven from all natural materials, much like a basket.

Typical mule costume.
Photo credit: Eleanor Tresidder

Speaking of animals, in Nepal the mules were well-dressed and wore all kinds of bells, from small ones all around the collar of their draft harness to single enormous ones dangling below the neck. We couldn’t see them through the mist, but would hear them ringing from behind and let them pass cliff-side (it was still too low in elevation and therefore too warm for yaks).

It wasn’t long before we encountered our first suspension bridge. As this was some people’s first suspension bridge EVER, a scene from Shrek ensued. They started slowly and gingerly crossing, clinging to the rails on both sides.

Ever have a friend who you knew was about to do something because they just got that gleam in their eye? Yeah, that “friend” was me. How can one possibly resist the urge to start jumping on the bridge given this opportunity? They caught that gleam in my eye as they turned around to scold me for rocking the bridge and laughed. Sorry, can’t help it! Rocking boats (and bridges) is a Rakshasa specialty.

BEFORE (Day 3): Notice the death-grip on the handrails. Photo credit: Eleanor Tresidder

AFTER (Day 15): Look ma, no hands!

Eventually the mist cleared somewhat and we passed some more houses. DK told us if we saw kids to put our palms together and tell them “Namaste!”

Informally this is a greeting that means hello and goodbye, similar to aloha. Formally it translates along the lines of “I solute the God within you.”

Namaste! The girls, except the one described below, tended to be more shy.
Photo credit: Eleanor Tresidder

Sure enough, most of them loved to play along and returned the greeting. DK was walking behind the group. We passed another kid, who after hearing “Namas-te!” from all of us, lit up like a Christmas tree when DK began chatting him up in Nepali. I turned around and lit up along with them, totally blown away. I asked DK later how long it took him to become so fluent, and modest as ever said he really wasn’t, that the boys (our Nepali guides and porters) knew what they could talk to him about and what they couldn’t. He was still learning every day. Well, he could have fooled me, and probably also that kid.

We  stopped at our second tea house for lunch and more tea. From here we watched an avalanche of clouds roll down the mountainside. Lunch was delicious, fresh, local and organic. What could be better?

“I’m so glad this life still exists for somebody,” I remember saying.

Home of little twinkle toes.

Further up the trail we stopped again for, you guessed it, tea (chiyaa). Dovile made friends with a little girl who lived in the tea house. The little girl seemed to think we were so much fun she just had to dance for us. She giggled and swung her hips from side to side, hamming it up for the foreigners.  She used whatever English words she knew and laughed when we answered her. She was so cute we regretted leaving, and looked forward to visiting again on the way down.

We ran out of daylight and had to don our headlamps before reaching Phakding (8,563 ft. / 2,610 m). Darkness brought out some spiders, and Amanda was not a fan. Hopping away from them interrupted her conversation with DK about books by Conn Iggulden. I was intrigued and made a note to add them to my reading list.

It wasn’t long after switching on the lights that we reached our home for the night and dropped our packs in the tea house common room. We were out of time to order dinner individually since all the food was made to order, so the group all shared our first yak cheese pizza, along with fries and some soup. Once we were all completely stuffed, they brought the menus out again and asked us to pick what we wanted for breakfast. (What?? You expect us to think about more food now?) This would become a post-meal-time ritual the rest of the trek. Eventually we learned what to expect on the menus and would consider what we wanted for the whole day at a point when we were still hungry. Or else we simply alternated between veggie momos and dal bhat.

There was cricket on TV, and I was mesmerized both by the cricket and the TV since I don’t have either at home. We met a couple of trekkers who were on their way down and asked them how it was. They looked much more… shall we say… worn than we did and we wondered what would look like by the time we were in their place.

Back in Surke we heard that two porter bags did not make it on either flight and would arrive the next day. It wasn’t until Phakding that we confirmed exactly whose bags were missing, because apparently some of the identifying prayer flags did not even last a day. Dovile and I paid the price for having such a heavy, crammed bag, as it was probably the ideal choice to abandon in favor of more fuel.

“Nobody say anything about my outfit tomorrow!” she joked.

We likely would have worn the same shirt three days in a row anyway, but having something different to sleep in and a toothbrush would have been nice.

The lodge where we would sleep was separate from the common room, and very beautiful. Everything was wood, down to the carved stair rail. There were three western style toilets down the hall from the rooms, with a bin in each for toilet paper we were not supposed to flush. Not having a sleeping bag was no problem. At most of the tea houses, they would provide us with pillows and big, heavy blankets. Those of us without sleeping bags got a couple extra at this place. I took stock of my day pack and was thrilled to see the bar of soap I forgot I tossed in there after forgetting to pack it in our porter bag before it was forcefully and irreversibly zipped that morning.

“There are no accidents!” I said to Ele as we washed our faces at the community sinks in the hallway.

So ended a long and wonderful day. I don’t think anyone had trouble sleeping that night.

The sun, roosters, and dogs were up early and so was I. It seemed the local canines were able to sleep like the dead all day because every night was an up ’till dawn bark-fest. Everyone else went down to a buffet style breakfast but I wasn’t hungry so I just stayed in and enjoyed some quiet time.

Why we don’t eat meat or drink the water.

When our 9 am call time arrived we went downstairs and met our tour guide for the day, a local woman whose name I don’t remember, only that it started with an R. We walked through the real Kathmandu (vs. the much cleaner tourist district where we were staying) which was an eye-opening bit of environmental-disaster reality. Raw sewage poured into what might have once been a river but instead was more of an open sewer choked with garbage. This did not seem to bother the pigs rooting around down there in the slightest. We held our breath as we crossed the bridge. You couldn’t ask for a better illustration to discourage us from eating meat (especially pork) or using the water to brush our teeth.

Photo credit: Kevin Cordova

We reached our destination, Swayambhunath, or the Monkey Temple and began the climb up a steep length of stairs to the top. True to its nickname there were quite a few monkeys climbing around the building and the trees. We were warned beforehand not to give food to the monkeys or they’d steal our hats, or make eye contact with the vendors or else they’d follow us up the stairs.

The trouble with the second rule was, I actually liked what they were selling. One woman was carving what looked like a zodiac in stone. Want… Somehow I mustered the willpower to avert my eyes and keep walking. Next we came to a man selling singing bowls, which I already knew I had to go home with. Whatever willpower I had left immediately vaporized and I succumbed to a demonstration.

Photo credit: Kevin Cordova

He told me what all the symbols meant and I was enthralled. He then put one in my hand and made it sing. Nice, very nice. He put another one in my hand and played it, and this time hummed into the bowl as it sang. The sound of this one resonated somewhere deep. Yes! This was the one. I asked how much. $35. That was way too much, I knew from shopping for them online at home. I began throwing objections his way and he had an immediate counter to each. I started to walk away and sure enough, he followed. The best part of this game was that the price went down the higher we climbed. A few levels up, we settled for $10. I was happy I got my singing bowl, he was happy he didn’t have to climb higher.

Pineal gland, or third eye. If you have the time David Wilcock’s talk about its appearance in religious symbolism is worthwhile.

At the top of the temple, R told us more about all the symbolism. I saw an excellent example of a pineal gland symbol in this particular stupa. The temple had a great panoramic view of the city, though it was a bit hazy.

My mandala. No tools were used to create these perfect squares or circles. Often times they use a paintbrush with only 1-3 bristles.

The highlight of the Monkey Temple for me was the Buddha Thanka Treasure art gallery. (Thanka means cloth painting.) A charming young man who spoke perfect English gave a lecture on both the symbolism of the paintings and the discipline it takes to create them. Artwork always ends up being my favorite souvenir so I happily bought a mandala and promised to email them a picture of the painting in exchange for a more detailed explanation when I got home.

I did not budget cash for this, so I paid for my painting with a card. They used a calculator to determine the exchange rate in rupees. When I signed the receipt the artist told me I had a very bad habit.

“I have many bad habits I’m sure.” I responded, bemused.

He said I needed to be more careful to check the number AND the words on my credit card receipt rather than just signing it. Yes, good advice. I wasn’t planning on using the card at all, but would keep this in mind if I decided to use it again.

Rather than walk, we took the van back to the hotel and then walked to lunch at a funky little upstairs cafe, the Phat Kath. In the innocence of daylight it reminded me a bit of the Swiss Family Robinson tree house at Disneyland, only, well… cool. The cocktail menu looked very appealing, but I was still being good at this point so I ordered a delicious mixed-fruit lassa. DK asked me what made me decide to come to the Himalayas.

“It’s like the backpacker’s mecca,” I said.

I was waiting for the right opportunity to make my pilgrimage, and found it when Active began organizing trips a few short years earlier. I chose Everest Base Camp over Annapurna because to me there was so much more history there, in the sense that I would be standing on the same ground as some of my favorite adventurers. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, Rob Hall, and last but most certainly not least my husband, er, hero Bear Grylls.

Later on in the hotel lobby downstairs we met a Catholic priest who taught Protestant school in Bangladesh but lived in Kathmandu. Very kind, interesting fellow, and I couldn’t help but envy his life a little bit.

That afternoon we were free to wander the shops and pick up any gear we may have forgotten. Many shops specialized in jewelry or textiles. All smelled of dust and incense. There was a trekking gear shop on every street corner, and great deals to be had on brands such as North Fake or Pataphonia. Dovile and I browsed for Buddha masks and flip-flops. She promised a vendor to return for a particular mask and took charge of bargaining for the sandals.

We changed currency in one of the many currency exchange market stalls for rupees in small denominations, 500 or less, for the climb. The exchange rate for rupees was about 87-1 at the time. It helped me to think of a rupee being worth slightly more than a penny. So 500 was a little more than $5. Anything higher than that and the tea houses likely wouldn’t have change. (ATMs gave you 1,000 rupee notes.)

Mentally worn down from haggling, crowds, dust, and blaring horns we abandoned the city streets to shower up and start packing the potato sacks before dinner. DK stopped by to make sure our gear was adequate. He thought both our down jackets were too light and recommended we rent heavier ones. They’d handle it for us in Namche.

“You likely won’t need it and might be cursing me later for having to carry it up there,” he said.

“I wouldn’t curse you!” I laughed. The idea that I might curse someone for trying to keep me warm at 18,000 ft. was silly. Besides, the poor porters would be carrying it, not me.

“Oh, good.”

He said something about my hei matau greenstone necklace, a mainstay on all my adventures since New Zealand. (The nice thing about writing is you can look stuff up. If you ask me about my necklace in person I’ll forget the Māori hei matau and refer to it in English as a “fish hook.”)

“Yes, it works,” I replied. “Safe passage over water, right?”

DK wore an enormous toki, which represents leadership, strength, power, wisdom, authority, control, determination and focus. Good attributes for a guide. I considered asking him who gave it to him, as traditionally people don’t buy greenstone for themselves, but decided the question was too personal.

My head was starting to pound. This was the only time it would happen the entire trip and for that I am so grateful. I drank more water but suspected the cause was simply lack of sleep and spinal misalignment from trying to sleep on planes for two days.

We followed DK through the crowded streets of Kathmandu for dinner, which was easy owing to the fact that he was so tall. He had his own look yet from behind the way he walked reminded me of Heath Ledger. We arrived at another nice restaurant. Instead of starlit views of the city, this time we were treated to live Nepali music. I ordered a salad and did my best to eat it all but my headache had killed my appetite. The host was concerned about whether or not I liked the food when he took most of it away and I insisted yes. DK saved me by telling them I was just full (pugyo) in Nepali.

Once back I tried any energy medicine tricks I could remember on the headache. I never get them in real life and wasn’t sure what would work. Tapping, Mirror Technique, Expanding Joints, Quantum Touch. The thing that finally worked was a few good yoga spinal stretches. One of them finally gave me the crack I was looking for and soon after I fell blissfully asleep, dogs and roosters be damned.

The time to board the five-hour domestic flight to Kathmandu had finally arrived. I went through security for the third time and had another uneventful flight. We began by soaring over the stunning green landscape and turquoise oceans of Malaysia. Soon after the water took on a brown, barren appearance that at first I took to be a desert. It’s only when we crossed onto land again that I realized it was water. The land appeared equally inhospitable. Where are we? The in-flight monitor was no help. Instead of the “you are here” flight path we enjoyed on the international flight, we were stuck with a cheesy Asian talent show involving sock puppets and reruns of Wipeout.

We crossed over huge brown rivers, or maybe they were they dry river beds. Eventually the land sloped upward and the pilot announced our approach. I looked hopefully across the sea of brown haze for a mountain peak and realized I must be on the wrong side of the plane. From Singapore, you want the right side of the plane to view the Himalayas and I was on the left.

Kathmandu
Photo credit: Kevin Cordova

Flying over Kathmandu, I was surprised at how big and colorful the city was. I’d had fair warning that it would feel third world and indeed the lower we flew the more apparent the crumbling buildings and scattered trash became.

Kathmandu airport
Photo credit: Kevin Cordova

We landed and used a ladder to deplane. A bus picked us up and we drove a short distance to customs. The building was old and beautiful with brick masonry and carved wood. I followed the crowd to a big room with various wooden kiosks littered with paper.

Okay now what? I overheard a man with a British accent loudly and bossily giving directions to a group of old ladies as to which lines on the form they needed to fill out and which ones the Nepali customs people didn’t care about. I chose a kiosk within eavesdropping range and followed his directions to fill out a Visa application (the big form) in addition to the card from the flight. But the anal accountant in me filled out all the lines. There were no writing utensils. I didn’t pack a pen and made do with my pencil.

I followed them to a line behind a desk with a row of four Nepalese men. When I reached the front, the first man checked the length of my stay, collected the $40 entry fee, and gave me two receipts. Next I handed the pink copy of the receipt to one of two men who were checking forms and passports. Finally I proceeded to the last man who issued the Visa, which was a sticker rather than a stamp.

From here I proceeded to the baggage claim. By this point I was tired, but perked up the instant I glimpsed my bag disappearing back to the employee-only side of the carriage. It made it! I almost skipped to the other side of the belt to await its reappearance and immediately stuffed all the coats I had been carrying with me “just in case” inside.

They waved me through customs and I braced myself for the chaos that awaited outside the airport. Active had sent multiple warning emails before our departure about arrival in Kathmandu. Forget altitude. Forget base camp. Apparently our most difficult challenge would be getting from the airport to the hotel.

I carried my own bag as instructed and found a man outside holding the Active Himalayas sign without any trouble. I then proceeded to walk the wrong way around a fence and was shooed in the other direction by airport security.

The man escorted me to and then left me at a van as he went in search of another passenger. Not long afterward he reappeared with a girl who introduced herself as Amanda.

Next we got our first taste of what we were warned of repeatedly before arriving. A man rushed up to the van and shouted aggressively that we must leave a tip and US dollars were OK.

Amanda told him “no” but he persisted.

She then shouted “we’re with him!” and pointed to our driver who was ignoring the whole scene as he calmly got in the van and closed the driver’s side door.

At this, the man melted back in to the madness and we were on our way. Amanda was originally from Wales and exclaimed in her lovely British accent how intense that was. I told her she did great, especially since all I could offer while it was going down was a mute wide-eyed stare and a mouth slightly ajar.

Photo credit: Kevin Cordova

We began the navigation through the narrow, dusty streets of the city. The closest I’d ever experienced to this before was in Mexico, but even that could not compare. It was order within disorder. Totally organic. No traffic laws, signs, lights or lanes. People, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, weird tractor car looking things, rickshaws… You name it, it was on the road and traveling wherever there was space to move forward. I was reminded of science movies featuring magnified blood cells all squeezing by each other, except blood cells tend to move in one direction.

I was amazed at how well our driver navigated our relatively large vehicle through the bedlam right down to the point where he made a three-point turn in the middle of a crowded narrow street and backed into an even narrower crowded alley in front of our hotel with maybe a few feet to spare on either side of the van.

Thamel Eco Resort

We checked in to the beautiful Thamel Eco Resort and received a note from our trip leader DK instructing us on where and what time to meet. My future roommate had already arrived, had the only key, and was not there. I waited outside the room until an employee let me in and checked the clock… my clock since there wasn’t one in the room. It had been 40 hours of travel since I left my house in California. Nap time. I collapsed on my bed, so grateful to be horizontal.

The rest of the afternoon was something of a blur. I met my roommate Dovile, a spunky and pretty blonde from Chicago who woke me up in time for our orientation with the whole group.

“This is my first backpacking trip,” she told me.
“What?” I laughed, somewhat incredulously. “If Everest is where you start, what are you going to do next?”

We walked upstairs to a yoga studio on the top floor of the hotel, and pulled some chairs in a circle. Including Dovile and I, there were 8 guests and two main guides (a third guide, Bibak, would join us on the mountain). Kevin and Stacy, a beautiful couple from Aspen. Mike and Sara, friends who just finished grad school in Colorado and were embarking on a world tour before starting work. Amanda and Ele who worked for Active in New Zealand.

Our trip leaders were DK and Sudip. Both of them, but especially DK, had that “smell.” The smell of someone who’s ridden the back of the wind, of 100 fun summers, of sleeping in trees, and adventures with Indians and pirates. (Hook, 1991). They were good-looking and had the sort of charisma that made people want to be around them. This adventure was going to be a fun one.

The trip was organized by Active Adventures in partnership with Earthbound Expeditions. I’d traveled with Active before in New Zealand on one of their Rimu trips and couldn’t have been happier with the experience so they were easily my first pick to see the Himalayas. Our goal was Everest Base Camp, and we’d be together 19 days for the journey there and back.

The guides gave us each goodie bags full of fun stuff like water purification tablets, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper. I joke, but all these things were practically worth their weight in gold on the trail. Each pair of roommates received a porter bag to share with a potato sack to separate each person’s belongings. Each porter bag had a different colored prayer flag to identify it. People who rented sleeping bags received one of these with a prayer flag to identify it too, in case it needed to be moved to another bag for weight distribution reasons.

Later we went to dinner on a rooftop with a starlit view of the Monkey Temple. Insanely cool place. DK told us the meat was okay to eat here, but I was looking forward to jumping right in to the Nepali cuisine experience after reading about my friend Katie’s experiences on her earlier Annapurna trek. I ordered my first dal bhat with ginger tea. Dal is lentil soup, bhat is rice, and it also usually comes with some sort of vegetable curry. I proceeded to start eating the dal with a spoon and DK tried to steer me in the right direction. In his gentle and polite Kiwi way, he told me the dal was supposed to go on the rice. I poured a little bit on, but still wouldn’t get the right idea until I saw the locals do it later. Even then I never mustered up the courage to eat it with my fingers.

We began to get to know each other better. Somehow I mentioned I’m from the Mojave desert and people asked me if we really have snakes and scorpions. Yes, we really have snakes and scorpions. Funny how something so ordinary to you can be so fascinating to others. Ele, Amanda and I realized we knew a couple of the same people through Active. Ele told me about a Nepali translator app she downloaded and I was immediately super-jealous of it. We’d hear the language all day on the trail, but I knew it wouldn’t sink in for me until I also saw it in print. The app really would have helped. Even without the benefit of alcohol (in most cases, see keeping healthy on the trail), the group was warming up to each other and starting to feel like a family.

That night was my first adventure with Nepali plumbing. After two days of planes, trains and automobiles I was rather greasy and keen on a shower. The entire bathroom was tile and a shower head on a long hose was simply attached to a wall. I turned it on and it proceeded to drench the toilet seat and the spare toilet paper on top.

I closed the lid, found higher ground for the TP, and engaged in a wrestling match with the hose, since more water was pouring out of it than the actual shower head. We settled on a compromise where I looped the hose in such a way that the water poured straight down and held it over my head, trying with some success not to get it in my mouth or eyes.

The entire bathroom was now a lake. Neither of us had packed thongs/flip-flops/jandals and made it our mission to find some ASAP.

I was still on California time and wide awake even though it was after 11 pm so I begin reading The Snow Leopard. I’d read a few other famous Himalaya-related books already and was saving this one. It had been highly recommended to me the year before by a friend whose opinion I respect, and I was happy to finally open it up.