September 12th- Everest Base Camp Trek: Day 10

Murphy's Law

Having conquered the Cho La pass, we were both in good spirits, congratulating ourselves and bantering with Raju as we settled in Dragnag for the night. After a series of early and gruelling days, we were excited for our later than usual 8am breakfast and looking forward to an easy 3 hours hike to Gokyo. Howevers things always can, and often will go wrong.

I awoke in the middle of the night to the sight of Holly leaning over the side of the bed, being sick all over the floor. Awakening Raju, we cleaned up as best we could at that hour, and assessed Holly.
She showed no other signs of altitude sickness, and it was just as likely she had eaten something off. By the morning, it was becoming clearer that that wasn't the case. Abandoning our hopes of seeing Gokyo's lake and taking in one last panorama of the Himalayas from the peak of Gokyo Ri, we descended instead to Machermo, shedding 300m from Dragnag's 4700. Debating whether to descend lower still to Dhole, we have opted to spend the night.

Holly, showing her characteristic selflessness, spends her waking moments worrying that she has let the rest of us down. Right now, she is sleeping, resting up for tomorrow's descent.

Blog post wouldn't be complete without a picture! Holly being escorted
down the mountain, the day was a blur to us all.

Altitude: 3400m
Altitude lost: 300m
Hours trekked: 3? 4?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where the Rainforest Meets the Reef

Image
Finally, we've made it out of the Outback! A few wrong turns, a couple canabalistic acts and some hair raising encounters with kangaroos later, we've finally made it out of the desert.... No, only joking! We've been out of the outback for months now, and wow do we have a story to tell! While in Alice Springs, we made the most of our time and applied to a couple jobs in and around the Cairns region, hoping that someone would reply by the time we reached the coast. Resumes sent, we went off into the Outback. Turns out we had left the worst of it behind us and the journey through Tennants Creek and detouring to the Devils Marbles was hot, yes, but completely manageable. We definitely felt we could take our time.... However, things don't usually work out the way we plan and we suddenly had a deadline looming over us. The "Devil's Marbles," a series of curious rock formations in the Outback, North of Alice Springs. The day after we left Ali...
Read more

October 25th- So This Is Van Life!

Image
As of Sunday (the 21st), we can officially call our new van our home! We sprung from the nest (thanks a million Barrie, Shana, Stephen and Asha, we had an amazing time!) and have been travelling around the Blue Mountains region. We're sticking around the national park as we find our camping legs and are enjoying getting into the swing of van living. Our journey so far! To be honest, our route planning skills aren't quite there yet, we are bouncing around a little bit and back tracking rather than doing everything in sequence, but it's been fun so we're not complaining! After we left Sydney, we drove to Old Ford Reserve in Megalong valley and set up camp there for 3 nights. It was a beautiful, small camp ground with fire pits down a long snaking road that boasted spectacular views. Matt the photographer taking some snaps of our campground neighbours. It was admittedly a bit far from any towns or attractions so we found ourselves with a lot of spare...
Read more

November 3rd- The Sun is NOT a Lie

Image
We last checked in from Oberon, a lovely small town in the Blue Mountain Regions, where we were re-cooperated from the bumpy glowworm fiasco. We spent the day sitting around the library and enjoying the sunshine before we started off towards the Boyd River campground located in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park. We set off, admiring the scenery which had changed from winding roads to country lanes. We reached the park and were immediately engulfed in flashbacks to the glowworm tunnel, potholes everywhere! We struggled through and made it to our campsite. It was lovely, tucked in the middle of the forest with tall gumtrees all around and a fire-pit with every campsite. This was by far our favourite campsite yet. The next morning we walked down the end of the park road (we were not taking the van over the rest of the potholes!) towards the Kanangra Walls Lookout. From there, we walked the the Kanangra Walls and walked the Kanangra-Boyd Plateau Cliff, taking in astounding views again. A...
Read more