Fundraising trek to Everest Base Camp

EVEREST BASE CAMP TREK -
A LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE

Doug Dawes' personal account of his incredible journey to Everest Base Camp
3rd - 19th October 2008
(click on any image to enlarge)

So, the day after my 60th Birthday my youngest son and I set off on our trip into, what was for us, the unknown. We had trained for it but did not know whether we had done enough and we knew that our fitness could not guarantee immunity from altitude sickness. We had never attempted such a trek before although my son had completed a number of triathlons and the London to Brighton Bike Rides for charity.

In the end we need not have worried. We met up with our group and immediately made friends. After all we were all facing the same challenge for the same reasons and we gelled as a group immediately. We had a marvellous mountain leader from England, Georgina Hobbs and an equally good Nepalese lead guide Kamal.

The Sherpas, porters and kitchen boys proved what a friendly race the Nepalese people are. The long flight to Kathmandu over, we journeyed by rickety bus through the crowded streets of another world which, initially, was a culture shock to us all.

Then we passed through the gates of our hotel and entered a completely different world. It was like a scene from the governor's mansion in the film "Carry on up the Khyber". We spent the day sightseeing on foot, buying any last minute necessities and repacking for our trek.

Early the next day we repeated the journey back to the airport to catch our internal flight to the mountains at Lukla. This was the most nervous time for us all as we knew the reputation of the airfield into which we would be flying, with the runway having a sheer drop at the landing end and a mountain at the terminal end.

The scenery on the flight was just a taste of what we would see on our trek and as we approached the airfield, halfway up the mountain, we saw that at least it now had a tarmac runway.

Again we need not have worried because for most of us the landing was exhilarating, with the brakes coming on a soon as the wheels touched down and a sharp right turn onto the apron just as we could see virtually every leaf on the bushes on the mountain, through the pilot's window.

After a quick lunch and meeting with the Sherpas, porters and the Jokyos (a cross between a cow and a yak) our adventure started. Looking back to write this, the following days seemed to have passed too quickly, but were without doubt some of the most memorable, enjoyable and physically exhausting of my life.

I kept a daily diary and very soon ran out of words to describe the beauty of the scenery which changed as we gained altitude.

I found time on the trek to talk for hours with the Nepalese lead guide, doctor and head sherpas who were a credit to the country of Nepal. We had been warned that as we gained altitude we would suffer in the mornings from breathlessness and headaches and that there was a danger of contracting acute mountain sickness which if untreated could turn into something more serious.