My travel diaries
Monday 14 May, 2007 - Everest Base Camp, Tibet
I don't know what to expect when I'm woken by Pasang with bed tea first thing this morning. We had originally intended to have a rest day at ABC after our climb up to the North Col, but when I returned to ABC after the climb, the camp was crawling with yaks; the yak herders had brought them up a day early. This potentially means we could skip the rest day and return early if everyone isn't feeling too tired - a big 'if'.
When Pasang wakes us, he tells us the plan is to leave today. We've not had much sleep, despite our tiredness, because the yaks sounded like they must have been sitting around no more than a foot from our tent, ringing their clanking yak bells close to our heads all night. Other things have kept me awake, too. I realise my face has been badly weatherbeaten during yesterday's ascent, and that I didn't drink enough water and am badly dehydrated. I spent a restless night alternately taking swigs of water from my flask and smearing my face with moisturiser. It remains to be seen how capable we'll be of walking all the way back to Base Camp.
I now have the opportunity of examining my face for the first time in the pocket mirror in my washbag. It's not a pretty sight. I have a hard purple leathery snout, cracked like a tortoiseshell. My lips are badly blistered and turning white, and I've lost a small piece from the tip of my nose, which otherwise appears to be bulging bulbously like a proboscis monkey's. At breakfast it's painful eating. Although everyone's been affected by the weather to some degree, I'm by far the worst off.
We pack away our stuff after breakfast and I try to cover as much of my face as possible from the sun. Our Nepali staff are keen to put the tents away, so I sling absolutely everything onto the rocks outside our tent and leave them to get on with it; but then it's the turn of the ultra-inquisitive Tibetan yak herdsmen. No fewer than four of them sit themselves down on the rocks and watch me pack. It's a little unnerving, and would be considered extremely rude by our own western standards of etiquette. For them there is nothing wrong with observing the unfamiliar at close range, however. Sometimes they try to help me, but I shoo them away - I prefer to do this myself.
I'm finished by 9.30 and set off to walk almost straight away, after saying goodbye to Petr, who is staying to wait for Klara on her summit bid. Most of the others have set off already. I amble slowly back down the Magic Highway. Quite near the top I pass another British expedition team on their way up to the North Col. I recognise Martin the West Ham fan from a pre-expedition weekend in North Wales a few weeks earlier. We stop and chat briefly, and the rest of his group stop with him, eager to learn how we've got on. Later on Tim tells me he'd explained to Martin how to recognise me when they passed him earlier: "he's the one with a blue down jacket whose face looks like a yak's arse". Cheers, Tim! Only a yak's arse is probably slightly healthier.
About half an hour further down the trail I catch up with Tim, Mark, Chris and Ian, and keep going. It's the last I see of them until Base Camp, although I keep expecting Ian to catch up with me again. It takes me 5 hours to get from ABC to Base Camp, a walk which took three days on the way up. I don't walk particularly fast, but I hardly stop, just three times for about five minutes each time. Despite this, almost every stretch of the track seems longer this time around.
I finally reach Base Camp at 2.30. Our old mess tent is still up, but someone has weighed the entrances down with rocks to prevent it flapping in the wind. I open a crack and climb in, and find myself on a 10 foot by 10 foot square dusty floor. One by one the others join me: first Ian, then Tim, then Mark, and Bunter and Chris. Then the guides turn up with tea and biscuits, which we eat in a circle on the bare ground. The yaks are taking a little longer to arrive this time, however, and are turning up in ones and twos rather than as a unit. Sangye is getting a little annoyed at the delay, but we get chairs set up in the tent, and then a table. I've been sitting there a long time by now, in just a couple of layers and a fleece, and am starting to shiver. My warm down jacket is with the yaks, my face is cracking despite constant application of moisturiser, and I'm feeling quite uncomfortable. A crate of cold beer arrives and is passed around, but this is hardly the thing I require.
Eventually, shortly before 6.30, everything is arrived, unpacked or pitched, nearly four hours after I first got here. By now I'm feeling decidedly shivery, and have been waiting to escape to my tent and climb into my sleeping bag for quite some time. The cooking equipment has arrived in the last batch of things, so by the time dinner is called more than an hour later, I'm fast asleep and nicely toasty again. I never look forward to the call for dinner when I'm wrapped up warm inside my sleeping bag, and now is no exception, but I've eaten very little in the last two days, yet expended thousands of calories. I have a tortoiseshell face which is never going to heal unless I start giving it some more fuel. I drag myself out of my sleeping bag and go to the mess tent.
We've been joined by two Australians from the other expedition team we passed earlier today. John is a school principal who has had no appetite for food since arriving in Base Camp, and has got no further. Trevor is a little more talkative, and made it as far as ABC earlier today, but has been suffering from severe headaches for the last ten days, since arriving in Tibet, and doesn't think he's likely to get any better.
It's difficult for us to appreciate how ill these people are. We've also been suffering from headaches for several days, at both Base Camp and ABC, and there have been times when painkillers haven't worked. We've also found it hard to eat; Tim, in particular, has eaten very little for a fortnight. Is there a different mindset in our determination to climb the mountain that we are able to ignore the discomforts and continue anyway? Or are we more experienced at high altitude, so we've learned that headaches and loss of appetite are not enough on their own to indicate acute mountain sickness and stop us progressing? On the other hand, perhaps they really are genuinely ill, more than we were, and it would be dangerous for them to progress. We just don't know.
As for me, I'm finding it increasingly painful to eat food, so crusty is the front of my face. Kaji our chef has saved his best till last and cooked us some roast chicken, which goes down well in any case. The Lhasa beer is circulating freely, but I'm not in the round. After a few cups of tea I retreat to the warmth of my sleeping bag for some much needed rest.
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