Saturday, April 23, 2005

Dear all, (from my babyboy)

Well Jacinta and I have just returned to Kathmandu from a three weeks trek in the Hymalas and are quite glad to be back to the husltle and bustle of the city as well as the good (cheaper) food, hot showers and the luxury of walking around with out packs!
The trek was fantastic....hard work..lots of hard work..but great.We ended up changing our plans a bit when we got to the first aclimitization point at Namche Bazar as we heard that the trek up the Gokyo side of the mountains was spectacular. So rather than heading straight up to base camp we decided to do our aclimitizing up the Gokyo side and then walk back around and up to Goark Shep and base camp.
I was pretty badly affected by the altitude very early in the trek - ( was feeling pretty bad frm the 2nd day till about the 10th day) and so we took the first part of the hike very slowly. making it up to Gokyo and the fifth lake in about 12 days.. Luckily after those rest days I was fine and had no problems after that.
Gokyo was a really nice place with six lakes (all frozen at the time) dotted up the valley. From there we climbed Goyko Ri - 5351m and had spectacular views of the mountain rang and the glacier running through the valley. We both made it up Gokyo Ri for the sunset over everest - and had to make the very steep decent in the dark with our little head lamps shinning the way and the water freezing in our drink bottles!
After Gokyo we walked down and around the valley - rather than going across the Chole La Pass and after 3 days of long, hard walking made it up to Lobuche and Goark Shep. From here we decided to just do the day hike to base camp rather than climb Kala Pata for another view of Everest. The walk to base camp was absolutely amazing and probably our favourite day of the hike. Base camp sits on the glacaier, just below an ice fall leading up to Everest - just a collection of brightly coloured tents amongs lots of ice and rocks - but still a great sight to see. The walk to base camp was so good because of the deatils we could while walking across the glacaier and up to the base of the mountains.
After that day we were both pretty wrecked and ready to get back to the comforts of kathmandu so walked back down as quickly as possible, arriving in Kathmandu yesterday morning. After setteling into a lovely quiet guest house, showering and catching up on our emils we feel nearly normal again (although probably a lot thinner than when we left!).
From here we plan to spend a few days recovering before travelling to Pokhara - the second largest city in Nepal - for some more relaxing and site seeing (rather than attempting the Annapurna circuit..aparently visibility is terrible at the moment...and we dont particularly feel like doing another epic hike). From there we will probably head down to India and then on to Europe.
Hope your all well, and we will keep you updated..............
Chris and Jacinta.

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