Julie White blog

02 September 2011

As many of you know, I am currently walking to the Everest base camp to help raise the profile of local explorer Mark Wood who is taking on a challenge of walking to the North and South Pole, back to back.

My challenge is nothing compared to his – but it’s still very hard work!

I am on day five of the walk today and we’ve had some free time so I have had chance to let people back home know how I am getting on.

When we first entered the National Park a few days ago there was sign up saying that you could now only feel love and not jealousy or anger – which was a nice touch. Our first sight of the ‘Milk River’ was breathtaking.

We’re now in a place called Namche Bazaar today and it’s absolutely beautiful – everywhere is so colourful and the people are so friendly. We are 3,400 metres high so we are at cloud level and we can see mountains and waterfalls. We also caught our first glimpse of Everest today.

It really is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. It’s been tough going because you are constantly going up and downhill – but you go uphill twice as much as you do downhill!

You have to spare a thought for the sherpas. Once you get to a certain height, items must be carried up – they can’t be brought up on transport.

You see the sherpas carrying up to 130 kilograms on their backs. We saw a boy of 15 the other day carrying five solid oak doors on his back – he was half the size of them!

It’s amazing how they do it but we saw lots of them waiting at the airport ready to carry goods up the mountains.

I think this is the last time I will be able to check-in for a few days as we lose signal from tomorrow and that’s also when the altitude sickness will kick-in.

But I am thoroughly enjoying it and I am so glad I have taken on this challenge.

Julie

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