Through the agency in the hotel we booked a 15-day trekking to the Mount Everest basecamp. We also booked a guide and a porter to carry our luggage. We met the guide before we left and he was a nice guy, always smiling.
We left on Sunday at 6.30, to have the flight to Lukla at 8.00. Lukla is the starting point for the trek. Unfortunately, our names were not on the flight list, so we had to wait for the next flight, which was scheduled for 10.00 o'clock. The flight is in a small 15-seats plane, and they fly on sight. That means if the visibility is bad, they don't fly.....and that happens quite often. Because of that, we had another delay of 2 hours, and finally we flew at 12.00. But at least we flew! The 2 days before and the day after, there were no flights. And as it turned out on the way back at the end of the trek, we had the only flight of that day, all other people had to wait at least for the next day for another chance.

Lukla is at 2300 meters height and you already feel that altitude when you start walking. The first day we walked for 3 hours, mostly downhill, and we were dead tired! Probably also our below-average condition was part of that...
The next few days we walked 5-7 hours per day, coming through several small villages where people live from farming and tourism. Underway we met some other trekkers, yaks and porters carrying supplies up to the villages. It's still low-season, so it was fairly quiet on the trails. For walking that was very nice, but in the evenings when we were sometimes the only ones in a lodge, it was a bit lonely sometimes.

We stayed in lodges in small villages along the route. These are very simple guesthouses. After 2 days there was no more running water (often not even any water to wash your hands and brushing your teeth was outside) and heating was through a wood-stove in the middle of the “dining” room. The showers were heated with solar-power (and sometimes just a bucket of water to pour over yourself), and after 4 days we had no more shower until we were back in Kathmandu. No running water meant also for the toilets...we have never seen dirtier toilets than here in our lives! Mostly it was a small wooden hut outside, with a hole in the ground. Bending down, you looked into everybody's shit. The smell was not all that bad, because as long as we were below the tree line, they used dry leaves to cover everything up, but higher up, there were no trees...and no leaves. But you get used to (almost) everything after some time....

The weather was good. After 3 cloudy days in the beginning, with a little snow, we had only sunny days with blue skies. During the day it was around 0 degree, but at night it was very cold, up to -15 or -20 degree. The lodges were not heated and not isolated, sometimes made from wood. We had sleeping bags with extra blankets to keep us warm, but the waterbottle next to our bed was frozen the next morning!

We had 2 acclimatisation days where we walked several hours, but went back to the same town to sleep. “Climb higher, sleep lower” is the advice to avoid altitude sickness. Nevertheless we had some trouble with the altitude. Jeroen had trouble sleeping several nights, and Marloes had headaches quite often. Sometimes also a loss of appetite, and no energy, which are signs of altitude sickness. But most of the times it went better after breakfast.

Then came the Big Day: we were in Lobuche, at 4900 meters, and would see the Everest that day. We had seen the top of the mountain already before, in the far distance, but we would come real close now. We had learned in the first few days, that the basecamp itself is not interesting at this moment. There are no expeditions (for the summit) set up yet, so there is nothing to see. Besides, you can't see Everest from the basecamp, we knew that. On the other hand, there is Kala Patthar. This is a hill opposite of Everest, where you have great views of both the mountain and the basecamp. For all trekkers, this is the real goal of the trek, not the basecamp. The only thing is that it's even higher than basecamp....at 5550 meters! The oxygen level is here only 50% compared to sea level, and you surely feel that.
We had been walking slowly during most days due to headaches and tiredness, so we decided to start early: at 7.30. There is a lodge in Gorak Shep where you can sleep, but because it's at 5100 meters, many people get altitude problems there, so we didn't want to take the risk, and decided to walk from Lobuche to Kala Patthar and back on 1 day. Some people can do that in 7 hours..... we did it in 11 hours! Marloes felt quite bad that day, having hardly eaten anything for dinner and breakfast. So we went very slow. But especially Jeroen was determined to reach Kala Patthar that day and motivated Marloes to keep going. And we made it! Reaching the top felt like reaching the summit of Everest, we were so happy and proud of each other!
The views were stunning; we had a 360 degree view of 8000-meter peaks, glaciers, lakes and of course Everest. After taking several pictures, we had to go down again, because it was 15.00 o'clock by then, and we had to go back to Lobuche still...
After a 30 minute break in Gorak Shep, where Jeroen had short, but terrible headaches, we left for Lobuche, where we arrived in the dark, at 19.00.

The last few days we walked back to Lukla to catch the flight back to Kathmandu. Walking was much easier now that we were used to the altitude and our condition had improved. Especially the last 2 days we noticed that the season was starting; a lot more shops along the route had opened and we met many more trekkers and yaks (carrying their luggage). Sometimes there was even a queue of people and yaks going up the trail...apparently it's like that all the time during high season.

Our guide and porter were very nice, friendly people. They wanted to do everything for us, we couldn't even pour our own tea, they did that for us! At the end of the trek, we got prayer shawls from the porter, apparently he was also very happy with us (and probably with the big tip we had given him ;-). Because we had come back 1 day earlier (we skipped a detour on the way back down), our guide wanted to accompany us through Kathmandu for one more day. He then also came with presents: a cd with the mantra “Om mani padme hum” and some original Nepal tea. It all made us feel very special.

The trekking has been tough, exhausting and dirty, but it was well worth it!