History

Pokhara sits on what was once an important trading route between China and India. In the 17th century, it was part of the highly-influential Kingdom of Kaski, ruled by a branch of the Shah dynasty. Many of the mountains around Pokhara still have ruins that have been dated to this time. By 1786, Pokhara had become an important way-stop on the trading routes from Kathmandu to Jumla, and from India to Tibet. However, Pokhara was only able to be reached by foot – and this lasted until the first road was completed in 1968, making it accessible to those travelling from further distances, interested in trekking the Annapurna Circuit.

Modern-Day

Pokhara has become a major tourist hub of Nepal, which more than makes up for its lost importance on the ancient trade routes. Though it is mostly known as the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, it has become a modern hub, with an old centre in the north of the city where old shops and warehouse from the ‘Newari’ style can still be found. There are also old temples in the city that are worth a visit. One, the Barahi Temple, is located on the middle of an island in the Phewa Lake, and is accessible only by boats.

Attractions

One magical attraction of Pokhara is the incredible view offered of the mountains trekked on the Annapurna Circuit, which is especially beautiful at dawn.a. (This section seems a bit strange to me – there must be other ‘attractions’ in and around the city – for example you could hire bikes, or explore the back streets on foot. There are also I think some waterfalls nearby – Devi Falls. There are great little street cafes, fresh fruit jouice stalls etc – perhaps some more research here! The Seti Gandaki River and its tributaries have created spectacular gorges in and around the whole city. The Seti gorge runs through the entire city from north to south, and though it is only a few metres wide in some places, the river runs so far below that in places it isn’t visible or audible.?????

Phewa Tal

Phewa Lake sits at the edge of Pokhara, and is a centre for many of the attractions to be found in the city. Many people returning from the Annapurna Circuit trek enjoy spending a day or two relaxing and take a boat trip in one of the the brightly-painted wooden boats. The eastern shoreline of the lake, the ‘Lakeside’ district or ‘Baidam’, is home to many bookshops, restaurants, and souvenir shops. One of the greatest features of the lake is the amazing view of the mountains when the lake is still and the weather is good, as the reflection in the water creates a double image.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company that specialises in the Annapurna Circuit and trekking holidays in various destinations including North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

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Clothing

Remember that temperatures can vary drastically at different elevations on the Annapurna Circuit, so your personal itinerary can play a large part in determining the clothes you pack. Temperatures vary from oppressive heat in the lowlands to freezing cold (and sometimes even snowstorms) higher up. For colder treks, a warm inner jacket, windproof outer jacket, thermals, gloves, hiking trousers, a neck-warmer, and something to prevent heat loss through the head are recommended. A trekking pole or two might also be a consideration if you’re planning on travelling longer distances. A good waterproof/windproof top layer is always essential, although you shouldn’t experience much rain outside of the monsoon season.

Everyday Supplies

A wide variety of hiking supplies can be purchased along the Annapurna Circuit, although many prices rise along with your elevation! If you want the satisfaction of knowing you’re contributing to the local economy, you can stock up while trekking on supplies such as toilet paper, soap, and even some hiking supplies like headlamps and fleece jackets. Local products such as fruit, coconut biscuits and Bon Bon biscuits are made in Nepal, and taste great as well! Maps are easy to get and are priced reasonably in various places such as Kathmandu or Pokhara. Though they aren’t quite accurate enough for critical navigation, they’re useful for pointing out the various mountains, and can make wonderful mementos of your trek.

Timing

Many people visit the Annapurna Circuit during the months of October and November. It’s not possible to trek the Annapurna Circuit later than November due to deep snow on the passes. Spring is also a good choice, and definitely warmer, but with an added risk of some views being obscured by fog as compared to the clearer vistas in October. You’ll be taking gorgeous shots of the local scenery no matter when you travel.

Water, Water Everywhere

It’s advised that people don’t drink the water from the taps on the trek, as foreigners are sometimes unable to handle the local bacteria. Options for trekkers instead are to use the ‘safe water’ drinking stations along the trek, use their own water purifiers or ensure that any drinking water has been thoroughly boiled in the tea houses first. It’s generally not a good idea to buy bottled water on the trek, as there aren’t any rubbish disposal systems along the Annapurna Circuit. It will also keep the cost of the trek down, as (if you’ll pardon the pun) the prices can be a little steep.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company that specialises in the Annapurna Circuit and trekking holidays in various destinations including North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

This article was provided by LeadGenerators – the smartest SEO agency in London, and the proud host of a series of Internet Marketing training seminars and Social Media breakfasts.

Food and Drink
When you are on your Annapurna circuit treks, you will no doubt find yourself sitting down to eat with a local Nepalese family.  There are a few things to remember when you are sharing a meal with the Nepalese. Once a person’s lips have touched a food item or food container, that food and container are then viewed as jutho (polluted).  So never make the mistake of reaching over and trying a delicacy from someone else’s plate – even if it’s your friend’s, as it will be frowned upon.

When eating never use your left hand to pick up food.  The Nepalese use their left hand to clean themselves after visiting the toilet and consider it unclean to use the left hand to pick up food.  You may think that you will not be eating with your fingers, as this is considered rude in our own culture, but utensils such as knives and forks are rarely used in Nepal. Fit in with the custom on your Annapurna circuit treks and get stuck in with your right hand, especially when eating Daal Bhat, a Nepalese speciality!

Clothing
Clothing can be tricky while you are on your Annapurna circuit treks – just what is acceptable to wear? On the one hand you are going to be hiking, getting hot and needing to wear lighter clothes so you are not weighed down, but while this may be great for you, it may not be the best idea if you want to respect the people and their culture.  Men do not walk around bare-chested, and though shorts are acceptable, you will receive more respect if you honour their traditions and wear long trousers. For women, wearing shorts and short skirts is a bad idea, which may be annoying to those exerting physical energy on Annapurna circuit treks. But womens’ legs can be considered an inappropriate public display and many Nepalese could be offended at so much female flesh on show.

Touching
The Nepalese maintain a modesty about the way men and women interact with one another in public.  Displays of affection in the presence of others are considered rude and any kissing, hugging or touching is discouraged.  So if you are going on Annapurna circuit treks with a partner make sure you keep touching to a minimum, and if you want to show complete respect, don’t touch each other at all when in public.

Temples
When you encounter the incredible temples while on Annapurna circuit treks, please do not just walk in and start taking pictures.  Temples are sacred places and are off limits to non-Nepalese, so unless you are given express permission do not enter the holy building.  If you manage to get permission, be sure not to step on the small group of stones or mandala that will be on the ground in front of the shrine.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run classic Annapurna Circuit treks for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

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Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

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The History Books
The first of the 14 mountains whose peaks rise above 8,000 meters ever to be climbed, Mount Annapurna was first scaled by members of a French expedition led by Maurice Herzog in June, 1950. Standing at 8,091 metres, Mount Annapurna is not only the highest point in the region of the famous Annapurna Circuit trek, but it is also the tenth highest mountain in the world. Not far behind, Edmund Hillary proceeded to climb Mount Everest, the tallest of the 14 highest peaks, becoming the first person to reach the summit in May, 1953. Just a year later, in July 1954, Italian mountaineers Lacedelli and Compagnoni achieved the first ever climb of the second highest (and some would argue the most challenging) mountain in the world, K2. And so, an era of Himalayan mountaineering was born. With the completion of the first climb up Tibet’s Shisha Pangma – in 1964, all 14 of the highest peaks were then conquered.

Oh Eun-Sun’s Story
Oh Eun-Sun, a 44 year-old from South Korea, made history in April 2010, just 13 years after she climbed her first of the highest peaks, when she became the twenty-first climber to have completed all 14 mountains. Oh’s journey began in 1997 with the climbing of Gasherbrum, also known to many as K4 – the first of the over eight-thousand metre mountains she had climbed. In 2004 she went on to conquer Everest, however it was not until she climbed K2 in 2007 that Oh started to really focus on her goal. Completing an astonishing 8 more of the 14 peaks in the space of just 4 months in 2009, she was then left with only one more mountain standing between her and a world record.

Saving the Best ‘Til Last
The arrival of 2010 left Oh Eun-Sun with just one more peak to master, and April saw her heading off to the Annapurna Circuit to complete her challenge. Good weather aided her in her challenge and on the 26th April, Oh was pictured firmly planting the South Korean flag atop of Mount Annapurna, thus completing her mission and successfully making her the first woman ever to have achieved the climbing of all 14 over-8,000 metre mountains.

A Tarnished Victory
Unfortunately Oh’s time on the Annapurna Circuit was tarnished slightly with questions raised by a fellow climber concerning her summit of Mount Kanchengjunga in 2009. Rival climber Pasaban, who had hoped to claim the record for herself by climbing both Mount Annapurna and Shisha Pangma consecutively, states that photographs of Oh supposedly taken on the summit of Kanchengjunga show rocks, rather than the snow that has appeared in the photos of other climbers who conquered the summit in the same year. However, as Oh’s ascent of Kanchengjunga remains in the Himalayan database, she remains able to claim her title as the first female to climb all 14 mountains measuring above 8,000 meters.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company that specialises in the Annapurna Circuit and trekking holidays in various destinations including North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

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Thorong La Pass
A trek of the Annapurna Circuit will start from the city of Pokhara and follow the Marshyangdi River to the summit pass of Throng La. This is the highest point of the entire circuit and, at 5,416 metres above sea-level, it affords spectacular views across cloud-strewn valleys to the other great snowy peaks which surround it. Hikers set off before sunrise on the climb to Throng La Pass as strong winds later on in the day can hamper the journey and make the hike more strenuous.

Annapurna 1
Holding the title of the world’s tenth highest mountain at 8,091m, Annapurna I is one of only fourteen mountains which fall into the ‘eight-thousanders’, and was the first of this elite group to be conquered. Attempted far less often than its counterpart Everest, Annapurna is notorious for the avalanches which ravage its slopes and terrorise those who try to summit. As you trek the Annapurna Circuit you can view the sun-kissed snowy peak of the mountain from a more respectable vantage as you pass by the base of this magnificent monolith.

Annapurna II, Annapurna III, Annapurna IV, Annapurna South
All these peaks, although sharing a name, are fully independent and have been conquered at various times through the 1950s and 1960s. They each have distinct silhouettes and on a clear day their sharply contoured peaks stand in vivid contrast to the dazzling blue Himalayan skies. As the journey continues around the Annapurna Circuit you will come to know each of these mountains by name and their dominating presence will track you every step of the way.

Gangapurna
While still a giant in terms of the world’s peaks, (at 7,455m it is ranked as the 59th highest mountain in the world) Gangapurna is the second smallest of the peaks seen on the Annapurna Circuit. With Annapurna III as its parent mountain, Gangapurna was never going to be a pushover and was in fact the last to be scaled in its entirety. It took until 1965, fifteen years after the first ascent of Annapurna I, before it was taken on by an expedition of German climbers.

Trekking the high points of the Annapurna Circuit is a true adventure. Those who face the challenge head-on and trek the entire route are treated to a magnificent reward, of not merely a personal physical accomplishment but also experiencing what is widely considered to be the most beautiful landscape in the world.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company that specialises in the Annapurna Circuit and trekking holidays in various destinations including North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

This article was provided by LeadGenerators – the smartest SEO agency in London, and the proud host of a series of Internet Marketing training seminars and Social Media breakfasts. 

Mount Everest (8,848 m) played host to two record-breaking summit attempts in the first climbing season of 2010. There was thirteen-year-old Jordan Romero, accompanied by his family, and Bonita Norris from Berkshire, Great Britain. Both brought a buzz with them to Everest Base Camp, because they were each among the youngest climbers ever to attempt the summit.

Young Mountaineers

Although Jordan and Bonita were both in the running to break an Everest youth record, the mountaineering pedigree of the two young Everest trekkers at Base Camp couldn’t be more different. Despite his tender age, Jordan is the more experienced, having climbed major peaks since the age of nine, and having already climbed the highest mountain in five of the world’s seven continents as part of the Seven Summits challenge. In contrast, at 23, Bonita was described by the papers as ‘a novice’. She was aiming to be the youngest Briton to summit Everest, but has only been climbing since 2008. She woke up one morning determined to climb Everest and break records, and was true to her word.

After declaring her mountaineering intentions, Bonita soon began preparing herself for her visit to Everest Base Camp, trekking in Snowdon in wintery conditions, learning to climb with ropes and tackling progressively more challenging mountains. This education culminated in an attempt on Mount Manaslu (8,163m) in Nepal, a formidable ‘eight-thousander’ that has claimed the lives of a number of adventurers since it was first assessed as ‘climbable’ in the 1950s. In 1974, Manaslu was the setting for the first all-female climbing expedition to conquer an 8,000 metre peak. Now, Bonita has left her own mark on Manaslu, becoming the youngest woman to climb the world’s eighth-highest mountain.

Plotting Her Progress

During her preparations for Everest, Bonita recorded her experiences in her blog, where she describes her training, the mountains she has seen, and her efforts to raise sponsorship for her summit bid. She writes about the training climbs she does with her team as they approach her ultimate destination, and the acclimatisation exercises they do along the course of the Everest base camp trekking route, which runs from Lukla airport to the foot of the Khumbu glacier.

When the team got to Everest after two weeks in Nepal, they settled in for the training climbs ahead. Finding a weather window, and conditioning for a summit bid is a gradual process. With each climb up Mount Everest, they carried equipment up to the higher camps to use later on. From Camp 2, Bonita used a satellite phone to relay messages for her blog, before returning to the safety of Everest Base Camp – trekking back down to “where the air is thick”, as she called it.

Not According to Plan

Bonita was fortunate to have an Everest veteran, Kenton Cool, on her Everest trekking team, but things did not go exactly to plan. With the training runs, they discovered that one of Bonita’s co-climbers, David, was unable to sleep sufficiently at altitude. Without being able to rest-up at the higher camps on Everest, exhaustion was inevitable. As a result, he had to “hang up his climbing boots”, and Bonita accompanied him as he departed Everest Base Camp, trekking back down to Gorak Shep where Bonita updated her blog.

A complication like David’s is just one of a number of elements against you when you’re going for a summit bid of Everest. If she reaches the summit in April or May 2010, Bonita Norris will replace Victoria James (who was 25) as the youngest British woman to climb Mount Everest.

About The Author:

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run Everest Base Camp trekkingitineraries for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

If you like our articles on travel, please check back to Travel Related Articles as we are adding new travel articles every week. This is the place for quality travel writing: articles that are free to use.

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1. A Rotary Airer

What is it?

A lightweight, four-armed, miniature, portable version of the heavy steel clothes-airer that graces your back garden.

Uselessness on an Everest Base Camp Trek?

Pretty high. Though lightweight it’s still yet another item to strap to your backpack. And, though it may be amusing to talk around as it sits outside your tent, perhaps imagining that you’ve woken up in the land of Lilliput, there’s little you can do with it that you can’t achieve with a line of string or nylon cord.

2. Tent Speakers

What are they?

A flexible, compact speaker set that can fill your tent with the sweet sounds of your MP3 collection wherever you may be.

Uselessness on an Everest Base Camp Trek?

Not overt. Music may be the perfect solitary escape from the intimacy of trekking life, but imagine rousing Everest base camp to the stirring chords of Beethoven’s glorious Ninth… or heralding the onset of a storm with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Who could object?

3. Pen Fishing Rod

What is it?

A slick little tube about the size of a marker pen that thrillingly extends into a 4ft fishing rod at a moment’s notice.

Uselessness on an Everest Base Camp Trek?

It’d be a miracle if you found fish living at altitudes above Everest base camp… but wow! It’s only the size of a pen! What if you did stumble upon a lake filled with trout at 5,600m? You’d look quite the amateur if you were caught without your fishing rod! Thankfully, those fears are now a thing of the past.

4. Earmuff Headphones

What are they?

Fluffy headphones that make you look like a mixture between a Panda bear and Mickey Mouse.

Uselessness on an Everest Base Camp Trek?

Fair. If you’re any kind of hiker you’ll want to drink in the beauty of the Himalaya in silence, and if listening to your music by night your snug woollen nightcap will make their warmth-preserving properties redundant. Still, if you want to bring a bit of 80’s kitsch back to Everest base camp, trekking with these wrapped around your grinning mug could be just the ticket.

5. Handpresso Kit

What is it?

A quite astonishing bit of kit that looks like a mixture between a 24^th century bicycle pump and a water filter. By pumping up the internal pressure to 16 bar, adding some water from your thermos and a dash of coffee, you and up to 3 friends can enjoy impeccable espresso whether you’re 20,000 leagues under the sea or approaching the outer limits of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Uselessness on an Everest Base Camp Trek?

Legendary. Firstly this would involved eschewing the traditional refreshment of tea during your adventure in the Himalaya, secondly the kit comes with specially designed espresso mugs and a set of napkins, none of which will amuse your trekking partners who have had to carry the extra tins of tuna that you ‘simply didn’t have space for’. On the other hand, think of the publicity when you stand upon the roof of the world, not haggard and exhausted like your predecessors, but buzzing from the high of history’s most high-altitude caffeine hit! We may have hit upon the new ‘Extreme Ironing’ here.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who for over 20 years have been the premier choice for the superlative Everest base camp trek. They now offer tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Camping takes on a whole new feeling of decadence as you emerge from your tent to a fantastic view of the Himalayas in the morning sunlight.  Memories of the wet canvas and soggy grass of European camping trips gone by will soon be forgotten as you’re greeted with a cup of tea and a bowl of warm water.  In the meantime, your breakfast will be cooked for you as you pack your day bag and prepare yourself for the trek ahead.  Porters will follow with the rest of your belongings, allowing you to continue unburdened.  This is the closest you will get to nature in Nepal, and sleeping under the stars gives you a chance to really appreciate the splendour of your surroundings.

To really experience Nepal, an overnight stay in a classic Nepali tea hut is a must; a combination of guest house, restaurant and social area, tea huts are renowned for their friendly atmospheres and sensational views.  Slightly simpler than a hotel, facilities include single rooms, running hot water, and often a dinner of traditional dish, Dal Bhat, (rice and lentil soup) that gives you a real taste of Nepal.  Trekking will be a breeze following a square meal and a good night’s sleep.

Located in Sauraha, just outside the Chitwan National Park, the Rhino Residency Resort adds an extraordinary element to your stay in Nepal.  Trekking can be postponed for a day whilst you enjoy the resort, which is home to over 524 species of birds, the great asian one-horned rhinoceros, the Bengal tiger and many other smaller mammals.  Beautiful gardens adorned with hammocks and a swimming pool can either repair the aches sustained, or refresh you in time for the next instalment of trekking.  Nepal is brought to you on a plate in the resort’s restaurant, serving various continental cuisine and beverages.  Soak up the luxury of the resort, but don’t forget the exciting Chitwan National Park is on your doorstep!

So, if you are used to the luxuries of a hotel while you are on holiday, take this opportunity to experience some of the more adventurous forms of accommodation that can be found around the Annapurnas.  Your Nepal trekking adventure will take you through some of the most spectacular scenery around, but an open mind to accommodation will ensure that you don’t miss any of the tradition and culture that the region has to offer.

Tony Maniscalco is the Sales and Marketing Manager for Ramblers Worldwide Holidays. Operating since 1946, they now offer over 250 guided group walking holidays in more than 90 different countries. On a Nepal trekking holiday with Ramblers, you can walk the most scenic landscapes at the best value prices.

Reaching the Peak for the Alzheimers Society

Andrew Williams is a 31 year old lawyer from Manchester. While this description connotes ideas of an average, successful man, in truth he is anything but average. In order to raise money for the Alzheimers Society, Andrew embarked on a 2 month expedition in the Himalayas, and survived a somewhat dramatic Everest trek.

After departing from Everest Base Camp, the group began a 7 day ascent and 3 day descent, that proved to be a difficult 10 day Everest trek.  Andrew’s trek from Everest Base Camp was gruelling, and his path to the top was filled with challenges. His group ran out of oxygen, after about 20 bottles went missing from a camp. However, their limited supplies took them to the summit and they managed to scavenge a few bottles to help with their descent. One of the most challenging aspects of their Everest trek was their encounter with the bodies of climbers who had been beaten by the mountain, never making it back to Everest Base Camp. But despite the gruelling reminders of the mountain’s dangers and their lack of oxygen, the group made it to the top, and all in the name of charity.

After leaving Manchester on 1 April 2009, Andrew returned home mid June, exhausted and with cracked ribs from coughing dry air at high altitudes. And while Andrew says he will never do the Everest trek again, he sees it as a valuable life experience, and is proud of his achievements.

Reaching the Seven Summits with Multiple Sclerosis

On 23 May 2009, Lori Schneider achieved her goal of completing the ultimate Everest trek when she stepped onto the summit of the highest mountain in the world.  It was also the final peak needed to complete the Seven Summits challenge (reaching the highest peak on each continent) making Lori one of only 25 women to have achieved this amazing goal. Aged 52, Lori was also the first woman over 50 years old to make the summit of Everest but, more remarkable still, she suffers from multiple sclerosis.

Lori began training for her Everest trekking expedition 12 months before she planned to make the climb. She attributes her success at combating the mountain and reaching the top to her positive attitude, her rigorous training regimen, her superfood diet and the support of her friends and family.

• From Everest Base Camp Lori, and her fellow climbers, had a long and arduous ascent. The final leg of her Everest trek was completed in -4˚ temperatures, with 60mph winds and near white-out conditions. She arrived back at Everest Base Camp on May 25 2009, as the first woman over 50 years old and with multiple sclerosis, not only to reach Everest’s Summit, but to complete the Seven Summits of the world.

Reaching the Peak 19 Times

For most people, reaching the summit on an Everest trek just once is an unthinkable achievement. But for Apa Sherpa, a 49 year old from the village of Thame in Nepal, reaching the Everest’s summit is just the first of many Everest treks. This incredible individual has completed the ascent to the summit a total of 19 times, a world record achievement.

From Everest Base Camp, Apa carried a sacred vase called a Bhumpa all the way to the summit. The high monk, Ngawang Tenzin Zangpo, asked Apa to carry the vase which had been filled over 400 different ingredients such as relics and plants to the summit. Apa was then to offer the vase to Chomolangma, Mother Goddess of the World, as a prayer to protect humanity and stop climate change.

Kirsty Parsons is the Marketing Manager for the Everest Base Camp Trek, an adventure website which provides holidays featuring classic Everest base camp trekking, as well as several alternative Everest trekking routes in the Himalayan region.

“Measuring Everest”: Q&A

How tall is Mt. Everest exactly?

8,844.43m [± 0.21m], according to the Chinese State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. This is based upon the highest point of rock and ignores the snow and ice upon it, if they are included we arrive at the widely accepted figure of 8,848m.

Are they the only group to have measured the mountain?

No. The peaks of the Himalaya range have been officially measured by British, Indian, American and International expeditions, the earliest having been commissioned around 200 years ago.

What techniques do they employ?

A variety. These have ranged from the use of theodolites, to anchoring GPS devices upon the summit, to satellite measurement.

Do all the results agree?

No, although the variations are so small that they will not affect its position as the world’s highest peak. It is even suggested that the summit may be increasing in height due to the movements of the tectonic plates constantly shifting deep beneath Everest base camp.

Who first measured the height of Everest?

Between 1847 and 1856, during their occupation of India, the British measured the Himalayan peaks as part of the wider-ranging Great Trigonometric Survey. At first believing Kangchenjunga to be the tallest mountain, Andrew Waugh and his team eventually discovered that Everest (or peak XV as they called it) was over 250m higher. They declared it to be 29,002ft tall, despite their measurements showing an even 29,000ft, in order to avoid the accusation that they’d simply rounded the figure up or down.

Peak XV?

Where possible Waugh’s expedition used local names for the peaks they measured (e.g. Kangchenjunga and Dhaulagiri), but as many were unnamed and Nepal and Tibet were closed to visitors at the time they often had to simply apply numeric titles.

So Everest was unnamed?

No. In fact the mountain already had many names. It was variously known as Chomolungma (Tibet), Shèngmǔ Fēng (China), Deodungha (Darjeeling) and a host of other local names. Refusing to favour one name over another, Waugh argued that naming it after his predecessor as Surveyor General of India, George Everest, was the wisest solution.

He must have been flattered.

Actually, no. Everest opposed the naming of Peak XV after himself, reasoning that his surname could neither be written in Hindi nor pronounced by a native of India. His objections were, however, futile and in 1865 the mountain was officially named Everest by the Royal Geographic Society.

Is Everest without doubt the highest peak on Earth?

Logically speaking, yes. It is the highest point above sea-level. However, Chimborazo in Ecuador actually reaches over 2,000m further from the centre of the Earth than the summit of Everest due to the fact that the planet bulges at the equator; but it’s peak is still only 6,267m above sea-level. Mauna Kea in Hawaii likewise reaches over 10,000m from its base in the mid-ocean floor, despite being only 4,205m above sea-level. Attempting an Everest Base Camp Trek is therefore far easier than attempting the same feat for Mauna Kea.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have offered expeditions to Everest base camp for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

“I’d love to trek to Everest Base Camp,” said Jessica following her Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 m) expedition. “It’s my next goal,” she said. Biel was accompanied by Grammy-nominated singer, Kenna, Lupe Fiasco and others on a 6-day trek to the Uhuru Peak, Kilimanjaro’s highest point on the volcanic cone known as Kibo, and the highest point on the African continent.

Like Kilimanjaro, Jessica’s next target is no stranger to famous faces. Mount Everest (8,848 m) has attracted a number of well-known visitors to its southern slopes over the decades since the Everest Base Camp (5,360 metres) was made accessible to trekkers. Well-known explorers such as Ranulph Fiennes and Bear Grylls have spent months on the world’s mightiest mountain. Likewise, actor Brian Blessed made the staging area his home as he prepared for repeated summit-bids in a determined and painful struggle to reach the highest point on the globe, 3,488 metres above the camp.

When American President Jimmy Carter visited Everest with his wife, Rosalynn, his circumstances were much more comfortable. President Carter had the rare privilege of seeing Mount Everest from the air, as he opted for a helicopter ride to Everest Base Camp. The same mode of transport was chartered by Nepalese ministers in 2009 for the staging of a cabinet meeting and press conference. Despite their intentions for the meeting to highlight environmental issues in the Himalaya, they were subsequently criticised for their disregard of carbon footprint concerns because of the helicopters used.

Robert Redford’s visit to the Khumbu was more low-key and unassuming. While he was trekking in Nepal, he stayed in the tea houses which provide tourists food and accommodation along the route of the celebrated Everest Base Camp Trek. The approachable actor, producer and director, was there to enjoy the scenery, and not to garner publicity.

The opposite is true of Biel and co on Kilimanjaro. Their entourage included an MTV documentary crew, and over 300 porters, guides and climbers whose progress was updated online with Twitter posts during their ascent. The aim of the trek was to raise awareness of the worldwide shortage of clean water in developing nations.

Water is an equally important issue in the Himalaya as it is in Africa since global warming has begun to endanger the ice caps and glaciers there. The populations that live along the Yangtze, Ganges and Indus rivers all rely on Himalayan meltwater to live.

“Globally, every 15 seconds a child dies of a waterborne illness” reported Jessica Biel on the ‘Summit on the Summit’ website, explaining her reasons for joining the Kilimanjaro trek. She also confessed that despite her high level of fitness she found the going “really, really hard.” But she was optimistic about her next challenge. “I can handle [trekking] for a longer period of time” said Jessica. She recognised that the trek to Everest Base Camp, which is a more gradual ascent to an altitude only 535 metres shy of Uhuru Peak, may be an easier prospect and provide better opportunities for acclimatisation.

It’s not only public figures with fame and privilege that get to experience the majesty of Africa and Asia’s highest peaks. Trekking companies run a variety of expeditions in Tanzania and Nepal. There are eight established routes converging on the summits of Kilimanjaro, ranging from the popular and well-worn ‘Coca-Cola’ route, to the longer more rewarding Lemosho trail. In Nepal, the Everest Base Camp Trek is the cornerstone of Nepal’s trekking tourism, culminating in an unforgettable view of the world’s highest mountain.

About The Author:

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the classic trek to Everest Base Camp for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

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Three Sherpas of the Himalaya

There is a tendency to refer to any local Himalayan mountain guide or porter as a ‘Sherpa’, although they may not strictly belong to the Sherpa ethnic group. In Nepal at least, Sherpas often insist on distinguishing between themselves and general porters as they usually hold positions of greater authority and are more experienced, able mountaineers. If you aim to climb any Himalayan peaks or simply head off for an Everest Base Camp trek, you will see why they are so respected and will doubtless hear tell of their famous predecessors. Here are three such men.

Tenzing Norgay

Controversially, Norgay may not even have been born a Sherpa. Though he claimed so in an early autobiography, later research has revealed that he was likely born in Tibet and forced into bonded servitude to a Sherpa family when his own was left destitute by disaster. Regardless of his origins, Norgay’s achievement, alongside Hillary, or being the first men to summit Everest on the 29^th of May, 1953 is regarded as one of the greatest achievements not only in the field of mountaineering, but in human history.

A modest man, he famously responded to the insistent questioning of journalists keen to know every detail of the ascent, “If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame.” He passed away in India in 1986.

His name, Tenzing, derives from the name ‘Tibet’, meaning ‘Equilibrium in all its essence’.

Appa Sherpa

A regular face at Everest Base Camp, trekking, guiding and climbing, Appa is famed for having ascended the 8,848m peak 18 times. Appa shares his hometown of Thame with Tenzing Norgay and, like many Sherpa, is unsure of his date of birth. His best estimate places him in his early 40’s.

Famed at a young age for his strength (despite his small frame), optimism and level-headedness, Appa has received three medals of commendation from the Royal family of Nepal and is regarded by many mountaineers as being one of the finest climbing professionals alive today. His simple philosophy that ‘Everest will always be there’ could doubtless have saved many foreign lives as many visitors to the Himalaya constrain themselves to one life-altering attempt at the mountains; an approach that dangerously warps a climber’s judgement.

Despite his incredible achievements in his homeland, Appa now lives in the U.S.A. and claims that he would give up his world records for his childhood dream of becoming a medical doctor.

Babu Chhiri Sherpa

Though his speed ascent of the world’s highest mountain, at 16hrs, 56 minutes, was later overtaken and beaten by Pemba Dorije and Lhakpa Gelu, Babu Chhiri is famous for a phenomenal feat of endurance that ensures his legacy in the lore of Everest Base Camp.

In May 1999 Babu Chhiri spent 21hrs on the summit of Everest without the aid of supplementary oxygen, he even managed to sleep at such a terrific altitude.

He died on Everest in 2001, falling into a hidden crevasse near Camp 2 while guiding a team of climbers. Before his death he is reported as having told an interviewer,

“The view is beautiful from the top of the world. Everest is like a friend; Everest is God.”

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have provided Everest base camp trekking holidays for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Flying Over Everest

Together with his pilot Chris Dewhirst, Leo was on board the first successful balloon flight over Mt Everest (8848 m), in October of 1991. It had taken ten years of preparation for the team, and was quite an undertaking to get all the equipment up the trail. They were keen to avoid the fate of the Japanese balloon pilots who attempted it the year before. That attempt had ended with a crash and a fire, and one of the pilots was forced to descend to Everest Base Camp looking for help while the other two sheltered under their parachutes.

But with the help of Meteorologists, Leo Dickinson’s balloon was successful. They took off from Gokyo, (4750m) which is a village in Nepal at a height just 610 meters lower than climbers begin their expeditions from Everest Base Camp. The route of the balloons utilised the power of the jet stream to move them over the peak, a tactic which earned them a feature of the recent BBC documentary “The Jet Stream and Us”.

As they approached Everest, Leo was worried that the burners might not be powerful enough to clear the mountain, and when the jet stream took hold of his balloon he said it was “almost like a hand pushing the basket and shaking it.” He described what he saw as he passed over the peak – and what he filmed – as “quite humbling.”

Extreme Canoeing

But Leo’s association with the mountain goes back even further. In 1976, he made a film called “Dudh Kosi – Canoeing Down Everest”, chronicling the pioneering journey of some British canoeists who took their kayaks down the Dudh Kosi river. The Dudh Kosi draws its freezing waters from the Tsholo Lake at 4555 metres altitude, which is just 800 meters shy of the Everest Base Camp on the Nepali side. The film captures the dangers involved in paddling down unusually steep rapids; it’s such an exciting white water challenge that adventurers have since duplicated the journey Leo filmed.

Filming the Impossible

Two years later Leo brought his camera back to the Himalaya to capture the events of a record breaking climb. European mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first humans to climb Mount Everest without carrying supplementary oxygen. Leo’s film called “Unmasked” follows their trek up Everest to heights where usually climbers would take tanks and masks because of the thin air. From Everest Base Camp the trek took a route past the Khumbu icefall up to the South Col and then successfully to the summit at 8,840 metres above sea level. And like many of the amazing things that happen on Mt Everest, Leo had his camera there to film it.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run Everest Base Camp treks for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

For mountaineers, the trek to Everest Base Camp is just the start of their adventure. When they reach the head of the Khumbu Valley, they establish their Everest Base Camp on the Khumbu glacier as they launch into the final stages of their training and acclimatisation that comes before any summit attempt. It is a gradual process that can take months, and often years, of preparation and planning.

For the famous television survival expert, Bear Grylls, his 1998 expedition to Everest’s summit took three months to complete. At that time, he was the youngest Briton to safely reach the peak. The following year, his British record was then eclipsed by Rob Gauntlett from Sussex, aged just nineteen.

But in nine years later, Bear Grylls returned to the Everest trekking region and made an even more audacious and dangerous venture. He attempted to fly a paraglider to an altitude exceeding the summit of Mount Everest. Bear would fly in a supercharged vehicle designed by his friend Giles “Gilo” Cardozo, trying to exceed the existing altitude record for paragliding of 20,017 feet (6101 metres).

In May 2007, the team set up their “Mission Everest” Base Camp having trekked with their heavy equipment to an altitude of 4400 metres in Nepal. On the day of the flight, with three hours’ worth of good weather, fuel and oxygen, Bear and Gilo launched themselves into the air strapped to what looked to be little more than a chair with a motor and parachute attached.

Soon they were spiralling up to a height further than that capable by the camera helicopter that was following their progress. However, the cameras onboard the paragliders showed a spectacular sight of a ribbon of blue sky merging into the blackness of space above, which at the heights they reached they could see even though it was daytime.

After seventy two minutes of flying upwards, when he was sure he had succeeded, Bear turned off his engine and glided down through the stunning mountain landscape that makes Everest trekking so special. The plan was to corroborate their altitude with a global positioning system and altimeters; unfortunately, they found in the thin air and sub-zero temperatures, their instruments froze when they were about four miles above the Mission Everest Base Camp.

Although the reading the instruments took before they froze showed that Bear, at 7621 metres, had surpassed the existing paragliding record by 1524 metres and was still climbing, the record cannot be official without a valid reading from the altimeter. Nonetheless, is clear what Bear had achieved in Gilo’s machine. The images from the onboard cameras showed Bear had cleared the height of Mount Everest, and the team estimated he had reached about 150 metres higher. This took him to above 3640 metres higher than the Everest Base Camp (that’s more than two miles) and almost five miles above sea level.

So as you embark on your Everest Base Camp Trek, spare a thought to the complex preparations, activities and adventures that may be going on ahead of you at the high end of the trail.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

In 2008, NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski embarked on his first expedition from Everest Base Camp, trekking towards the summit. He was forced to turn back on that occasion, but this year he returned for a second try. On May 20^th, with the support of his NASA trek team at Everest Base Camp below, he reached the summit at around four in the morning, in time to see the sunrise on the curved horizon.

The Views He’s Seen

Scott has had a remarkable life so far. His education spanned four continents, attending schools in Senegal, Lebanon, Iran and Greece, as well as the U.S. In 1989, he completed his doctorate at Stanford Medical School and then continued to study and practise medicine. With NASA, Scott had the enviable experience of seeing the world from a different and rare perspective, taking space walks while in orbit around the earth. These were part of his five NASA space shuttle missions where he worked on the Russian Mir Space Station and helped construct the International Space Station. This meant he spent hours floating in zero gravity with the blue planet spinning beneath him.

Astronauts and Everest Records

Scott Parazynski is not the only astronaut to crave further adventure after returning from space, and his association with the world of mountaineering is not unique. The Apollo 11 astronaut, Neil Armstrong, teamed up with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1985 to help Hillary set another record. It was more than thirty years after Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had returned safely to Everest Base Camp from the summit, becoming the first team to successfully reach the top. Armstrong flew Hillary to the South Pole in a small plane, helping Hillary become the first person to have stood on both poles and to have stood on Everest’s peak.

Twenty four years later, as part of his acclimatisation preparations for the Everest ascent, Scott and his NASA team approached the mountain via the classic Everest Base Camp Trek route. He then took a number of training runs up the mountain to get his body used to the exertion and thin air. Once he was ready, he headed for the summit with a lump of rock from the moon in hand, which had been collected during Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 moon landing.

Photographing the Top of the World

As part of Scott’s second and successful Everest trek, he carried a special, high-quality robotic camera to capture panoramic images of the mountain. Called a GigaPan Epic, it is mounted on a tripod and left to scan for a while, collecting a 360 degree image of the view which is then stored on a computer. The results are wide strip of an image that you can zoom into and pan across, with an image that sharpens and refocuses as you interact with it. It’s an interesting preview of what is waiting for trekkers at the culmination of the Everest Base Camp Trek.

The picture shows the many yellow and orange tents scattered among heaps of rock and boulders at the base camp. The fractured ice of the Khumbu Icefall is visible, as is the base of the Nuptse, an adjoining mountain. You can see the Khumbu valley leading up the mountain through which the NASA trek team approached on their Everest Base Camp Trek.

Scott took the camera up Everest to Camp IV. At 7,920 metres, it is believed to be the highest photo of its kind ever taken. However, the photos of Scott at the peak were more conventional: flags of sponsors and charities being held up for the camera, jackets adorned with memorial badges of space missions, and Scott with frosted eyebrows and a pink smiling face.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Despite living in an isolated and difficult environment, they are world-renowned for their friendliness and the warm welcomes they offer to visitors on the trail to Everest Base Camp and on similar treks in the Everest region. In fact, without the Sherpas’ co-operation and assistance, the journey would barely be possible for the thousands of travellers and climbers that trek in Nepal each year.

Everest trekking holidays rely upon the local knowledge and experience of the Sherpas who act as guides and porters on the various routes, under the watchful eye of the head guide or Sirdar. The in-depth knowledge and understanding of their native landscape and conditions, means that the Sherpa guides can ensure the safety of travellers on an Everest Base Camp Trek and other Everest treks, whilst the porters will help to transport the gear and supplies that the trekkers bring with them.

The Sherpas are invaluable to the mountaineers who embark from Everest Base camp on summit bids to the world’s highest mountain. While the climbers use Everest Base camp as a place to acclimatise, recuperate and make training runs up the mountain, the Sherpas will be busy servicing the camp and looking after the climbers. More importantly, they will constantly conduct essential repairs to the route for the treks up Everest. In a single day the Sherpas may make multiple trips up the formidable mountain to fix ropes and the ladder bridges across the crevasses on the Khumbu Icefall, and to maintain the supplies on the higher stages of the climb.

The Sherpa capital is a town in the Everest region of Nepal called Namche Bazaar, a colourful town hanging on the side of the Khumbu valley at an altitude of 3,440 metres. This is a vital stop on many Everest trekking routes where people can rest and get used to the increased altitude. This is a market town where trekkers can find access to the internet as well as a range of goods sold by the Nepali traders.

When visitors stop in Namche Bazaar, they will enjoy the legendary Sherpa hospitality that they will also experience in the villages along the way, where trekkers can rest as they acclimatise. Treks frequently make use of the traditional Sherpa tea houses for rest stops, meals and overnight stays on most of the Everest trekking routes.

From the tea houses to the temples and the colourful streamers decorating the trails, you will be immersed in the Sherpa culture while on the Everest Base Camp Trek. You will take home fond memories of an under-appreciated race of people who are happy to share their beautiful country with travellers from all over world.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

Blessed’s Everest Trek Emulates Mallory

He made his first run at the mountain in 1991, as part of a film called Galahad of Everest, which was a tribute to his childhood hero, George Leigh Mallory. On this occasion, Blessed reached Camp IV which, at an altitude of 8000 metres, is 2650 metres up from Everest base camp. This is the last major camp where climbers make their final preparations for the summit. It is also where exhausted climbers rest on their way down from a summit attempt. Blessed’s achievement at reaching this point was made more poignant by the fact he was dressed in same type of clothing as Mallory wore in 1924, for the sake of the film’s authenticity, and he climbed without bottled oxygen.

Blessed’s Second Everest Trek Breaks Records

Blessed returned for another Everest trek in 1993. This was the first successful commercial ascent of Everest run by the expedition company Himalayan Kingdoms, now called Mountain Kingdoms Ltd. This time Blessed came better prepared. On this occasion he was forced to turn back at an altitude of 8,595 metres, but by reaching this height at the age of 56 years, he had climbed higher than any other man of his age. It remains Blessed’s proudest moment despite his record being broken in 2003 by a climber called Yuichiro Miura.

The Dalai Lama Blesses Brian’s Everest Trek

A determined man, Blessed tried a third ascent in 1996. This time he was sent back by the expedition leader when the weather worsened. He reached about 7,680 metres, but then was advised he had gone far enough. Blessed was pragmatic: “You have to obey the rules of the mountain,” he said. While he waited for his team at Everest base camp, they were able to reach the top, and tie a scarf from the Dalai Lama to the summit pole on behalf of Brian. Brian had become friends with the Dalai Lama after meeting him on his several visits to Nepal. They even exchanged phone numbers.

Clearly his Himalaya adventures have had a profound effect on the actor. In one interview, Blessed described the impact that the scenery can have: “My favourite walk is from the Lukla airstrip just outside Kathmandu to Everest base camp.” This Everest trek would mean ascending more than 2500 metres on foot. The classic route takes you through pretty Sherpa villages and dramatic high mountain scenery. “You walk through jungles and valleys and, suddenly, the giant mountains appear through the clouds.” But his passion for the region and the mountain are summed up better by his succinct words: “Adventure is life. Everest is life.”

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run Everest Base Camp treks for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Northallerton Dummies

It’s common for people to go to unusual lengths to raise money for an Everest trek, knowing that something special awaits them when they reach the Himalayan Mountains. In August 2009, sixteen students and three teachers from Northallerton College in Yorkshire will be doing something quite original to raise money for their Everest Base Camp trek later in the year.

With all the activity and exercise of the Everest trek ahead of them, the students aim to raise money for the trip by sitting very still. A high street store in their town has hired them to assume poses in the window displays in the place of mannequins. The stunt coincides with Yorkshire Day on the 1st of August, so the students can expect to attract the attention, and hopefully the donations, of many of the locals that pass by.

Fourteeners

The Northallerton students are not the only young people in the news for their fundraising right now. In July 2009, the diminutive and fresh-faced Matt Moniz aims to ascend fourteen of Colorado’s highest mountains within two weeks to raise money and awareness for a crippling disease. He has dubbed the expedition “14 in 14″, because each of the peaks he is climbing is in excess of 14,000 feet. What makes this expedition more audacious is the fact that Matt is only eleven years old.

In the build up to this feat, he trained by trekking to Everest Base Camp. He and his father, Mike, took the variation that includes summiting the neighbouring Kala Pattar (5545m) where they got a great view overlooking Everest Base Camp. The idea of Matt’s series of climbs is to reach heights where he might experience the shortness of breath that his best friend, a Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension suffer, has to endure daily.

Having reached Everest Base Camp at 5,360 metres (17,600 ft) Matt has already ventured to altitudes beyond the ‘14ers’ he has ahead of him, but the Everest trek is a more gradual ascent than what he has ahead. Although several of Colorado’s mountains are hiking grade ascents by their easiest routes, doing one every day for two weeks is an exhausting prospect.

If they complete all fourteen of the intended peaks in a fortnight, they will have ascended vertically about the equivalent of Everest-and-a-quarter and more than twice the vertical distance from sea level to Everest Base Camp. Matt and his team, which includes the family of his sick friend, have already raised 14,000 dollars for charity, and climbing.

The Chocolate Sherpa

For 30 days earlier this year, the Belgian explorer, Louis-Philippe Loncke, led a small team on a 400km trek from Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp. Known as the ‘Crazy Belgian’ from his previous mad expeditions, Louis Philippe wanted to raise money towards setting up a much needed mobile hospital in Nepal. Apart from the distance covered, the unusual feature of this Everest trek was that it involved distributing 100 kilos of Belgian chocolate en route to the local Sherpa population and holding a high altitude chocolate tasting session when they eventually reached Everest Base Camp.

The team called themselves the Chocolate Sherpas and used their unusual mission, not only for fundraising, but also to give something back to the Sherpa people and porters who have helped support so many Everest treks over the years. Their expedition successfully reached Everest Base Camp on the 1st May and, for the many climbers and porters who were waiting there to make their summit bids, their arrival was a very tasty and welcome break from their regular routine.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the classic trek to Everest Base Camp for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

Tidying Everest

Tidying up at high altitudes is a difficult proposition. Beyond the altitude of about 7,000 metres, where the air gets significantly thin, climbers are understandably more concerned with lightening their loads and completing their journey than keeping the ground free of litter.

This is particularly the case beyond Camp 4 (7,920 m) where mountaineers make the final push to the summit, or are staggering back towards safety. Because of this, there has been discarded equipment and empty oxygen bottles accumulating for many years.

There have been a number of clean-up expeditions on Mount Everest (8,848 m). In 2000, National Geographic filmed an all-out clean-up effort on the mountain and even got Sharon Stone to do the voice-over for the documentary. Another full-scale cleaning trek from Everest Base Camp was organised by a Japanese team in 2007. Increasingly, mountaineers are encouraged to use recyclable metal containers, which feed Nepal’s scrap metal industry, and the toll for littering on Everest is being used to fund the ongoing tidying mission.

Despite these efforts, the outcry continues and the condition of the world’s tallest mountain has become symbolic of how we mistreat our natural wonders. Even the legendary Apa Sherpa, Everest trekking veteran with 19 Everest summits to his name, has used his fame to draw attention to the problem.

However, the emphasis of this concern has shifted more recently to focus upon the effects on Mount Everest of a more widespread problem. More alarming than litter (and less easily rectified) is the damage to the Everest environment being caused by global climate change.

And this is where the concerns of the environmentalists and the Everest community tend to overlap. The outdoor pursuits enthusiasts, mountaineers, and the adventure travel companies that conduct variations of the Everest Base Camp Trek all agree: they want to ensure the future of Nepal’s wonderful landscape.

Global Warming

It is easy to see even with anecdotal evidence how global warming is affecting the landscape around the Everest Base Camp Trek trails. For a while, the Sherpas have been reporting how the snow caps have retreated, and Greenpeace have issued a ‘before and after’ image comparing a photograph of the Rongbuk glacier taken in 1968 to how it looks today. The reduction of the ridges of snow and towers of ice is clear to see, and similar changes have been recorded on mountains thousands of miles away, such as Mount Kilimanjaro (5,893 m) in Tanzania.

Whatever the cause for this change, the importance of glacial melting should not be underestimated. The melt-water from Himalayan glaciers provides the water volume for the Indus, Yangtze, and Ganges rivers and affects the populations that depend upon that water. If the Himalayan glaciers melt considerably, it could mean dangerously increased flooding along those rivers, followed by severe long-term water shortages.

Again Everest trekking luminaries such as Apa Sherpa are outspoken on the cause. Following on from his Eco-Everest climb in 2009, his next expedition this month will be to climb an unnamed (and possibly unexplored) Nepalese peak. He will likely be armed with his banner for the summit photographs: “Stop Climate Change – Let the Himalayas Live!”

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Sherpa at the Olympics

As I write, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics are in full swing. In the Ice Hockey, the hosts Canada have lost their grudge match with the USA; Amy Williams has won a long-yearned-for gold medal for Britain in Luge, and there have been crashes galore on the slopes. Amid all this drama one of the memorable highlights was a moment of camaraderie from the 15km Free Cross Country event.

When participant Danny Silva of Portugal crossed the line in last place, more than ten minutes behind the field, he was greeted with rapturous applause that he wasn’t expecting. He was carried from the line by fellow competitors, the Ethiopian entrant and Dachhiri Sherpa from Nepal. Their smiling faces made one of the pictorial highlights of the games and captured something of the fabled Olympic spirit. For Dachhiri Sherpa, who finished in ninety-third spot, just participating was achievement enough since he admits he’s not much of a skier.

Everest Marathon

Before taking up the sport, Dachhiri was an endurance runner. In 2002, he won the Himal race, an arduous 23-stage marathon race between Annapurna Base Camp and Everest Base Camp. After that, with the Olympics in mind, he was asked by his government to take up skiing. At that time, he had never been on skis before.

Although there are mountains galore and plenty of snow in the Himalayas, there are no facilities for skiing, which made it particularly difficult for Dachhiri to train. Instead, the focus of the region is the Everest Base Camp Trek trail that runs from the famous Lukla airport (renamed Hilary-Tenzing airport in 2008) to the Base Camp on the side of the world’s highest mountain.

Rather than skiing, Nepal is geared-up to host trekking and long-distance running events such as the Everest Marathon, which the 40-year-old Dachhiri used to run regularly. This is the highest marathon in the world, beginning at an altitude of over 5100 metres above sea level, within sight of Everest and its Base Camp.

Everest Tourism

In the future, Nepal is looking to widen its range of adventure sports. Some companies have made bids to run paragliding flights over Everest Base Camp and sightseeing flights near the mountain. A more outlandish proposition is to have a fixed hot air balloon next to the mountain, presumably to serve as a viewing platform, although I hope the winds around Mount Everest (8,848 m) will be taken into account.

Ahead of the Nepal Tourism Year 2011, there have even been talks with China about reintroducing the Lhasa-to-Kathmandu bus service, a mutually beneficial move to restore a route between Tibet and Nepal. Also, with boosting tourism in mind, the Adventure Sports Tourism Society plans to schedule popular sporting competitions in Nepal such as Mountain Biking and Triathlon events. As well as promoting the Everest Marathon, the Nepal Association of Tour Operators aims to create spectacles such as a sky diving competition with Everest as the focal point.

Some tourism commentators have expressed a concern that Mount Everest may eventually become little more than a theme park venue in the Himalaya. On the other side of the world, in Disneyland, Florida, the Everest Expedition ride has already put this theory into practise. On the ride, theme park goers can explore an imitation Himalayan landscape complete with prayer flags and Sherpa villages before boarding a rickety train to Everest Base Camp. The ride ascends a 200-foot high replica Mount Everest, where the riders have a startling encounter with an angry yeti before hurtling backwards down the mountain: a very faithful representation of the true Everest experience!

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the trek to Everest Base Camp for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

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What You’ll See

The Annapurna Circuit offers a wide variety of scenery from the lower foothills to the high peaks.  Initially you will walk through fertile, cultivated valleys and terraced hillsides before rising through pine and fir forests to reach high yak pastures and eroded sandstone cliffs. As you climb to the high point of your trek the landscape will become noticeably more arid and dramatic and you will be surrounded by the giant mountains of the Annapurna range.

Throughout your Annapurna trek you will pass through picturesque villages and encounter many welcoming local people as well as pilgrims en route to Muktinath temple – a sacred site for both Buddhists and Hindus.  The pilgrims, as well as locals and trekkers adorn the route of the Annapurna Circuit with multi-coloured prayer flags, sending prayers and blessings into the skies.  As well as temples you will also pass many stupas on your Annapurna trek.  These are spiritual monuments that help keep evil sprits out of the villages.  Just make sure you walk clockwise round them or you may find the mountain gods are not on your side.

Traditional tea houses and lodges provide convenient rest stops along the way, as well as places to take meals. Some of the guesthouses can be pretty basic, but are comfortable and will certainly be welcome after a day of hard walking on the Annapurna trek.

Highs and Lows

When you reach the Thorong La Pass you will be at highest point on the Annapurna Circuit, at 5416 metres. The view there is spectacular, especially on a clear day. The Thorong La Pass forms a natural viewpoint between two slopes where you can look out across the mountain peaks of the range ahead of you and behind. Further on, the Annapurna trek will lead you to the deepest gorge in the world carved out by the Kali Gandaki River, a river older than the mountains it courses through.

The Annapurna Circuit is not for walkers uninitiated to the physical demands of a trek: it involves nineteen days of strenuous walking covering a two hundred mile route. People taking this trek should prepare themselves with plenty of walking and a fitness regime in the weeks prior to departure, as better fitness enhances your enjoyment of the Annapurna trek experience as well as helping combat some of the effects of altitude. Thankfully these effects are rare because of the acclimatisation stops incorporated into the trek itinerary, and because of the gradual way the trek’s altitude increases along the way.

After nineteen days in the mountains you will be reintroduced to the urban world at the small city of Pokhara, before flying from Pokhara airport to Kathmandu. The three week itinerary for the Annapurna trek includes some time at the historic, bustling city of Kathmandu, with its restaurants, rickshaws, palaces and temples. The monuments that line the Kathmandu valley are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Visiting some of these Buddhist stupa monuments and Hindu temples are a great reminder of your time on the Annapurna Circuit.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company that specialises in the Annapurna trek and trekking holidays in various destinations including North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Joanna Arrives in Nepal

Joanna Lumley had originally planned a “quiet, private visit” to Nepal, but following her campaign for Gurkha veterans’ rights in Britain, she has become a hero in Nepal. She was met at Kathmandu airport by more than a thousand Gurkha veterans and supporters, people who had walked for days, trekking from Annapurna’s mountain villages to thank her.

Joanna attended a number of presentations where she was bedecked in silk scarves, garlands of flowers and greeted with applause. There were scores of people holding placards depicting words of thanks, featuring her new nickname “Ayo Goddess Joanna”. One placard was amusingly affable: “We admire British Public totally.

A small plane was chartered to fly her across the Himalaya, so she could visit the Gurkha veterans in several small villages, and see some of the amazing landscape that makes Annapurna treks so breathtaking. At Dharan, the entire town was waiting to welcome her.

The Gurkhas

Gurkhas have served in the British and Indian armies for more than sixty years, although the tradition of Gurkhas serving alongside British troops dates back as far as the early nineteenth century. The Nepalese men, from whom the Gurkha regiments are assembled, are reputably tough and exhibit remarkable endurance. This is a strength that is common to both the Gurkha and Sherpa peoples of Nepal, and is often demonstrated by them while serving as guides or porters on an Annapurna trek in the Himalaya. They are capable of carrying large loads over long distances and steep slopes in thinning air, a feat that never fails to impress the western visitors trekking in Annapurna.

The village of Ghandruk, which you may visit while on an Annapurna trek, is at the centre of the Gurkha tradition. The village is a recruiting centre for the Gurkhas, where boys and young men volunteer for tests of physical prowess to impress the recruiters. There is great competition for places. Serving in a foreign army provides an opportunity to prove themselves, bringing pride to their families and a welcome wage in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Until recently, veteran Gurkhas that retired before 1997 had no right to stay in Britain, despite having served for the country. This situation left many veterans homeless because they had been denied permission to work in the UK while they applied for residency there. Thanks to the recent change in policy, all Gurkhas that have served four years in the British military have the right to apply for residency in Britain when they retire.

Lumley’s Legacy

Joanna Lumley, who took up the Gurkha’s cause because her father owed his life to a Nepalese soldier in the Second World War, was very moved by the appreciation of the Nepalese people. She was overwhelmed when she arrived at Pokhara, which is the starting point for several Annapurna treks routes into the Annapurna region. Joanna learned that a hill in Pokhara was to be re-named in her and her father’s honour. Mattikhan Hill will now be known as Mattikhan Lumley View.

After the welcome she received in Nepal, Joanna was reticent to leave. ‘I want everyone to know how beautiful Nepal is. I’d love to go back, but next time to do more looking rather than being looked at.

If Joanna were to go trekking in Annapurna, she would not have to go far from her hill in Pokhara to find the families of the people her campaign has helped. The popular Annapurna trek route to sanctuary lodge would introduce her to the owner of the Mountain View Cafe who was a Gurkha and has a family connection with the British army; his father was awarded the Military Cross for his service in World War one. It is veterans like these that Joanna Lumley has helped by pressing the government into action.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company that arranges a number of routes for an Annapurna trek and specialises in trekking holidays in various destinations including North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

From summit pictures to those taken along the course of the Everest Base Camp Trek, the best photographs are those that capture some of the scale and beauty of the Everest landscape and transport us to places seen only by an adventurous few.

Tensing on Top of the World

Everyone will remember the iconic image of Tensing Norgay, masked and hooded with one boot on the peak of Everest, with blue daylight merging from the horizon into the darkness of space above. Above his head he is holds his ice axe, which bears the national flags of the expedition team that waits expectantly at Everest Base Camp three thousand metres beneath him. You can also see the guide rope curled at his feet which ties him to his climbing partner, who is out of shot. This photograph, of course, was taken by Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953, just after they became the first mountaineers to reach the summit.

This is one of several striking images of Everest expeditions belonging to the Royal Geographic Society. Another powerful picture (that you can see for yourself on the National Geographic website) features Hillary and Norgay on the way up one of the steeper stages. They labour towards the camera which looks down the mountain, with the slopes twisting down behind them in giddy perspective towards the South Col and Lhotse Face below. As well as giving an impression of the steepness of the climb, this image conveys some of the effort involved in the long hard, trek from Everest Base Camp.

Reinhold Messner’s Tent

Reinhold Messner was the first recorded mountaineer to reach the summit alone and without the use of bottled oxygen. Imposing these limitations upon himself, it is no surprise that he described himself as “a single, narrow, gasping lung, floating over the mists.” This notion is depicted by one of his arresting photographs: his tent tied on a precarious outcrop of snow in the foreground with only an expanse of cloud behind, and no sign of a safe place to stand.

Part of the visual impact of these images comes from the innate difficulty in attaining them; but you don’t have to be a professional photographer – or even a mountaineer – to take a breathtaking shot of Mount Everest. Internet photo sharing sites like Flickr contain a bounty of amateur snaps taken along the Everest Base Camp Trek trails and at Base Camp itself. They show that anyone has the potential to catch the world’s mightiest mountain in a good light, emerging from the mist, or cutting an impressive silhouette from the sky.

If you like the idea of gathering your own photo diary of an unforgettable adventure, then you should investigate the classic Everest Base Camp Trek, with the chance to see Mount Everest with your own eyes, and take some memorable photographs.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Many visitors like to spend a few days in the bustling capital of Kathmandu before they attempt their Annapurna treks. The city has many spectacular sights all of which should be explored whilst on your holiday.

The tourist heart of Kathmandu is the Thamel district where you’ll find numerous cafes, bars and restaurants.  Here you can enjoy some delicious Nepali cuisine, although it’s probably advisable to wait till you return from your Annapurna trek before too much over-indulgence.  Thamel is also a great place to pick up bargain souvenirs and any trekking gear you may need before setting off on your Annapurna trek, though perhaps it’s best to leave the souvenirs till after your trek’s finished as you don’t want your backpack to be too full.

Taking a forty minute walk from Thamel to up to Swayambhunath Temple is a great way to get some practice in before you start your Annapurna circuit trek. However, if you’re looking to relax before beginning your Annapurna trek then you may want to travel by rickshaw to the revered Buddhist Stupa. Swayambhunath is one of the most important Buddhist monuments in the country and is often referred to by visitors as the monkey temple, due to the large number of monkeys that make their home in the grounds.

If you prefer bats to monkeys then you may want to visit the former King’s Palace (now a museum) before beginning your Annapurna trek. Although the palace is typically modern looking, built in the second half of the 19^th century, the giant fruit bats which hang from the trees outside never fail to attract foreign visitors. Try to visit the King’s Palace just before sunset when the giant bats flock en masse around the city square.      

Freak Street was a popular hippy destination during the 1960’s and 1970’s when overlanding tours were all the rage and Kathmandu was a major stop on the hippy trail. However, shops in this street still claim to sell everything from incense to enlightenment and the spaced out vibe makes it the perfect place to chill out before your Annapurna circuit trek. 

Next to Freak Street is Durbar Square, also known as Hanuman Dhoka, and a World Heritage Site.  It is a fascinating complex of ornately carved temples, palaces and monuments including the old Royal Palace, where you may catch a glimpse of the living goddess or Kumari – a young girl chosen as the incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga. Wandering through the beautiful buildings of Durbar Square provides a sense of calm before the excitement of your Annapurna trek.

Pashupatinath is another cultural must-see in Kathmandu.  It is a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva, in his form as the Lord of animals. Whilst only Hindus are allowed to enter the temple premises, non-Hindus can observe the temple from the banks of the Bagmati River. The temple is considered to be Lord Shiva’s most sacred temple and you will observe many cremations taking place alongside the banks of the holy Bagmati River, whilst religious Sadhus carry out ceremonies.

One of the most important sites for Tibetan Buddhism is the Boudha Stupa, also known as Bodhnath, and this will be one of the most recognisable cultural sights that you will encounter on your Annapurna circuit trekking holiday. All elements of the complex carry special significance and represent aspects of Buddhist philosophy and belief. Perhaps though the most recognisable symbol is the Buddha’s two eyes which look out from each side of the main tower. Take a closer though and you will also see a third eye in-between them; the symbol of the Buddha’s wisdom. 

With so many incredible sights to see in Kathmandu, the destination is the perfect place to both begin and end your Annapurna trek; you’ll certainly need the two trips to the capital in order to see everything you want.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who specialise in Annapurna Circuit treks and trekking holidays in various destinations including North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

The most daring stunt aiming to influence the Copenhagen summit from Everest’s summit had been planned by an Indian expedition. They intended to draw attention to the effects of global warming by skiing from Everest’s peak down to Everest Base Camp and, in doing so, set a high-altitude skiing record. Unfortunately, an increase in avalanche risk from heavy snows meant they had to abandon the expedition.

Base Camp Swim Trek

In April 2010, a hardy individual and adventurer, called Lewis Gordon Pugh, is planning to use his courage to help the environmental cause in Nepal. Lewis is a long-distance swimmer who has previously demonstrated his remarkable constitution and determination by swimming in the sub-zero Arctic Ocean. He put up with the intense cold on that occasion to draw media attention to the receding icecaps, and intends to stage a similar publicity stunt at Everest next year to draw attention to the disappearing glaciers in the Himalaya and worldwide.

Wearing only trunks and goggles, he will swim a kilometre in the Khumbu Glacier’s lake, close to Everest Base Camp. Lewis expects the experience will be “excruciating”, and points out that there aren’t facilities to take a hot shower on the mountain. There will be a dinghy accompanying him on his freezing swim in case he gets into difficulty, and Lewis has enlisted the help of some Sherpas to haul the escort boat along the Everest Base Camp Trek trail to the lake.

Everest Biker

As part of an ongoing odyssey, Japanese cyclist Keiichi Iwasaki has shown he is the ultimate green traveller, setting an example for everyone. Keiichi has been travelling around the world for years, but has been doing it entirely under his own steam: by bicycle. During his eight-year journey, he has travelled through thirty seven countries and had amazing experiences, all at a low cost to the planet and his pocket.

One of the stops on his grand tour was Nepal, where Keiichi diverted his round-the-world bicycle trek to Everest Base Camp so he could summit the world’s tallest mountain. He successfully reached the peak of Everest in 2005, having clearly developed the necessary stamina and lung power from all those hours of cycling. Because of this, Keiichi has earned the curious accolade of being the only man known to have journeyed from sea-level to the top of Everest unassisted, in other words, using just his own power.

The Everest Trekking Environment

Despite concerns for its preservation, the Everest landscape is far from ruined. It remains an incredibly beautiful and varied environment that changes visibly at different altitudes; something that can be witnessed on the many trekking routes through the Himalayan countryside.

These treks are predominantly led by Nepalese guides who take pride in their country and its maintenance, and come from communities living along the Everest Base Camp Trek trails, communities that have learned to have a limited impact on their surroundings. It’s a lesson the rest of the world needs to learn in order to preserve our planet’s most breathtaking and vulnerable environments.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Nepal and Tibet are now hugely popular destinations for trekking holidays (with the Annapurna Circuit and the Everest Base Camp trek reckoned as two of the best treks in the world) but it wasn’t always so.

The Himalaya, for a long time, remained the last blank on the map, an uncharted and unexplored land. Nepal, Tibet and the other Himalayan nations were closed to outsiders for centuries (most until well into the twentieth century), their lands and people a mystery. Myths clung to the mountains, and none more so than the myth of Shangri-La.

Shangri-La in the West

In 1933, James Hilton published Lost Horizon, perhaps inspired by a combination of Buddhist myth and the Everest trekking expeditions of the time. Set in the aftermath of a plane crash in the Himalaya, the British and American survivors find themselves at the hidden Buddhist monastery of Shangri-La, a utopian “heaven on earth” where the inhabitants enjoy a prolonged life of near immortality. 

Just like any other myth, the popularity of the myth Shangri-La was inevitably affected by the state of the world at any time. With a world economy wracked by the great depression, and the great powers sliding towards fascism, communism, and eventual world war, the idea of an escape in the mountains held an understandable appeal. 

In a strange twist of fate, the myth found an unusually receptive audience with the Nazis. Fascinated by the occult and the concept of the master race, the regime was understandably drawn to the idea of a perfect place where eternal life was possible. In 1938 they tried to find it – a Nazi expedition went trekking around Everest and the Himalaya in search of the mythical place.

Shangri-La in the East

Lost Horizon was the book that sparked western imagination, but the idea of a paradise hidden in the Himalaya originated centuries before James Hilton set his typewriter in motion, or any westerner went trekking to Everest and the Himalaya. Known as Shambala, the Buddhist myths of the Himalaya speak of a hidden kingdom of the enlightened, governed according to the highest precepts of Buddhism.

Like every Buddhist myth, Shambala has both an “outer” interpretation (that it refers to an actual hidden kingdom) and an “inner” one (that it refers to a state of being or a place of spiritual contentment.)  

The Final Word?

Today, Tibet and Nepal have both been thoroughly explored. The world’s highest mountain has been conquered a thousand times over, and Everest Base Camp treks are massively popular amongst more adventurous travellers. The idea of an actual kingdom of Shangri-La hidden away in the mountains may only be entertained by the most wild conspiracy theorists, but the myth lingers on. With almost no part of the earth left unexplored, except for the deepest parts of the ocean, there will always be a part of us that craves the mystery that Shangri-La offers. 

The Dali Lama, when asked about Buddhism’s most popular myth, had this to say:

“Nowadays, no one knows where Shambala is. Although it is said to exist, people cannot see it, or communicate with it in an ordinary way. Some people say it is located in another world, others that it is an ideal land, a place of the imagination. Some say it was a real place, which cannot now be found. Some believe there are openings into that world which may be accessed from this one. Whatever the truth of that, the search for Shambala traditionally begins as an outer journey that becomes a journey of inner exploration and discovery.”

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who for over 20 years have been the premier choice for the superlative Everest base camp trek. They now offer tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

The bustling centre of Kathmandu is literally brimming with tourists and backpackers. And whilst a few are just content to spend a few days in the country chilling out and soaking up the peaceful vibe, many more visitors are using Kathmandu as a gateway to a much bigger Nepal trekking expedition, be it the Annapurna Circuit or even Mount Everest. Luckily Kathmandu is full of incredible places to explore, which makes it a great place to spend a few days before or after your Nepal trekking expedition.

Thamel Chowk is the main square in Kathmandu and the place where the majority of the capital’s gift-shops and restaurants are located. There are a number of delicious restaurants where you can fill yourself up with traditional Nepalese food before starting your Nepal trekking. However, if you’re also coming back to the capital after your walk then you may want to wait until then to start your souvenir shopping. After all you don’t want your rucksack to be full before you’ve even started.

Thirty minutes outside the centre is the Swayambhu, one of the most revered Buddhist monuments in the country. Visitors to the area often call the Stupa the monkey temple due to the large number of monkeys that make their home in the grounds. The temple also contains prayer wheels and Buddhist artwork with 365 steps leading up to the top. Just make sure you watch out for the monkeys on the way down!

However, if you prefer bats to monkeys then you may want to take a visit to the King’s Palace. Although the palace is modern looking, having only been built in the second half of the 19^th century, the giant fruit bats which hang from the trees outside never fail to attract foreign visitors. Try to visit the King’s Palace just before sunset when the giant bats flock en masse around the city square in a giant swarm.

Another popular area in Nepal is that of Freak Street, which had its hey-day during the swinging sixties when overlander tours and kaftans were all the rage. The shops in this psychedelic street are a relic of the past, but still claim to sell everything from incense to  enlightenment. The spaced out vibe of the area makes it perfect for chilling out before beginning your Nepal trekking expedition.

One of the most important sites for Tibetan Buddhism is the Boudha Stupa and this will also be the most recognisable sight that you will encounter in Kathmandu. The golden tower is said to represent the World Mountain, or Neru, which is home to the Gods and centre to the cosmos. Whilst the two eyes are instantly recognisable, those who look closer will also see a third eye in-between, which is the symbol for knowledge.

With so many incredible sights to see in Kathmandu, the destination is the perfect place to both begin and end your Nepal trekking expedition; you’ll certainly need the two trips to the capital in order to see everything you want.

About the Author

Tony Maniscalco is the Sales and Marketing Manager for Ramblers Worldwide Holidays. Operating since 1946, Ramblers Worldwide Holidays now offer over 250 holidays in more than 70 different countries. On a Nepal trekking holiday with Ramblers, you can walk the most scenic landscapes at the best value prices.

The herds of yaks you will see in Nepal are domesticated and have bells around their necks. As they are herded down the Everest Base Camp Trek trail, they fill the mountainside with a distinct enchanting sound. What is less enchanting is when a herd of sturdy yaks blocks your passage on an Everest trek; you will probably have to step aside, deferring to their massive horns.

A Yak by Any Other Name

In English, the word yak (which is worth eight points in Scrabble) is used to refer to the whole of the species; however, to a native of the Everest region of Nepal the term ‘yak’ only means the male animal, with the word ‘dri’ or ‘nak’ referring to a female.

Although you may see the domesticated variety, Bos grunniens, while Everest trekking, the wild Yak, Bos mutus, is considered extinct in Nepal and Bhutan. Yaks are quite closely related to the African buffalo, the American bison, and the European bison, except they are adapted to living between 4,000 and 6,000 metres above sea level. They can still be found at these altitudes in Tibet, and there are some isolated populations in China, too.

The type of yak you are most likely to see at the start of an Everest Base Camp Trek is a hybrid: half yak, half cow. Locally, these are called Dzo (male) and Dzomo (female). They are smaller than yaks, and their shorter hair means they are better at handling warmer climates at lower altitudes. As you ascend on your Everest trek, you will notice that Yaks replace their hybrid cousins as they are extremely well adapted to higher altitudes. As well as having a higher concentration of red blood cells, they even have an extra pair of ribs to accommodate their larger sized lungs.

Food & Fuel

Of course, apart from a form of transport, another use for the yak is for food. Yak meat is high in protein, containing only one sixth of the fat of beef, and makes a fine Everest trekking meal when served with noodles. Nothing of the yak is wasted in Nepal; the horns are used as cutting implements, and even the head of the yak is sometimes served for dinner, especially as part of New Year celebrations.

The yaks themselves eat grass, and often have to burrow through several feet of snow to reach their food. They have learned to eat snow when they are thirsty and unfrozen water cannot be found.

Yak milk (or rather, dri milk) is full of goodness, with twice the fat of cow’s milk. It is yellowy in colour and is mostly used for butter and yogurt. These make good energy foods to keep you fuelled-up for your Everest Base Camp Trek. It is so fat-rich that it can also be burned as lamp oil.

You’ll eat the majority of your meals along the Everest Base Camp Trek at Nepalese tea houses. These provide convenient rest stops where trekkers can put their feet up, eat, sleep and acclimatize to the mountain environment.

Some of the tea houses will cook meals over a traditional yak dung stove. Although you may shudder to think of your food being so close to manure, this is in fact a brilliant, environmentally friendly way of cooking. Trees are sparse in Nepal and considered too important to burn, and so the dung of yak is dried and used as a convenient source of renewable fuel.

Hairy Bovines

The other way yaks can provide warmth is with their fur. Yak fur can grow to as much as two feet long, and might be used for clothing along with yak wool, and can also be made into ropes and sacking. It is even used to make hairy tents. The yak fur allows smoke from inside the tent to escape, while the oil in the fur keeps water from penetrating inside.

When you add up all the benefits that this local beast can offer, from transport, baggage, shelter, clothing, tools, food, drink, and fuel for heating and lighting, I am sure that you will agree that on your Everest base camp trek, the yak is more useful than a Swiss Army Knife – by far!

Kirsty Parsons is the Marketing Coordinator for Everest Base Camp Trek, an adventure website which features the classic Everest Base Camp Trek, as well as several alternative Everest trekking routes in the Himalayan region.

In May 2009, Sir Ranulph Fiennes finally achieved his ambition of reaching the summit of Mount Everest, having tried the Everest trekking routes up both the Tibetan and Nepalese sides of the mighty mountain. It was the culmination of a long-running charitable effort in which he raised huge amounts of money for Marie Curie Cancer care. It has been a cause close to his heart after Ranulph’s wife and several of his family members died from Cancer within a period of a few months.

Sir Ranulph’s accomplishments, which have always been startling, were even more remarkable with these Everest trekking expeditions because of his age and his state of health while he was climbing. At the age of 65 years, Fiennes is the oldest Britain to have reached the summit and the first pensioner.

His Everest adventure began in 2003 when he began preparing for a 2005 summit attempt from the Tibetan side of Everest. His first challenge was to prove that, at the age of 60 and recovering from cardiac surgery, he was strong enough even to attempt the mountain. After a series of trial mountain climbs and training expeditions Fiennes was passed fit for Everest. Nonetheless, because of a troublesome medical condition, he had to wear a gas mask while sleeping at base camp. Everest was clearly going to be one of his greater challenges.

On his first summit bid he suffered serious chest pains and considered himself lucky to get back down the mountain alive, having to rely on emergency medication to keep his heart working. In 2008 he tried again, but again, due to exhaustion, didn’t make it. But Sir Ranulph was a determined man, even spending his honeymoon with his second wife at Everest Base Camp.

In 2009, he tried a third time, taking a route up the South East Ridge from the Nepal side of Everest. Because of his health issues, Fiennes was well-placed to appreciate the difference in altitude between the Advance Base Camp in Tibet (at 6500 metres) and the Nepalese Everest Base Camp (5,380 metres), calling the latter “a far healthier launch point for the summit.” To keep him healthy, Fiennes was kept separate from other climbers at base camp to avoid catching a virus.

During the climb, Fiennes relied heavily on the skills and encouragement of his Sherpa co-climber, Thundu. They established a slow, steady pace out of Everest Base Camp, and Fiennes rested as much as he could at the camps along the route. Despite his uncertain health, and his difficulties in holding an ice axe properly because of his missing fingertips (that is another story), they made it to the summit of Everest on May 21st 2009.

When he returned to Everest Base Camp, exhausted, he told reporters what he had seen at the zenith of his Everest trekking adventure: “It felt like you could dive into the clouds,” he said. He could see “the sickle moon and stars everywhere.”

Not bad for a man with a fear of heights.

Kirsty Parsons is the Marketing Coordinator for Everest Base Camp Trek, an adventure website which features the classic trek to Everest Base Camp as well as several alternative Everest trekking routes in the Himalayan region.

The world’s highest mountain was the setting for a dramatic record-breaking attempt in September 2009 as three men jumped from a helicopter at an altitude of 6,154m, which is twice the exit altitude of an average recreational jump. Their aim was to land on a plateau called Gorak Shep (5,164m), a narrow, sandy area of open ground close to Everest Base Camp. To do this they were in freefall for only four seconds, during which they fell more than a thousand metres; they had this brief time to steady themselves before opening their chutes, after which they had to steer to safety. The whole event was over in three minutes.

It was not a feat to be attempted by the inexperienced, but the trio have accumulated more than 13,000 jumps between them. Two of the sky divers are British; veteran sky diver and cameraman Leo Dickinson and skydiving instructor Ralph Mitchell, and they were joined by Air Commodore Ramesh Tripathi from the Indian Air Force.

Ramesh commented on how the jump was challenging because of the high winds and freezing temperatures. At one point he was taken away on the wind. Their landing was also a risky prospect, having to avoid the glaciers, crevasses and ridges around Everest Base Camp. Leo Dickinson confirmed that it was a dangerous landing, suggesting that overshooting the plateau could mean death or ending up ‘with something important broken.’

They were rewarded for their nerve with a perspective of the Everest Base Camp trekking landscape that few people have seen before now. “It was not just Everest” said Dickinson, “I could see the whole panorama of fantastic mountains and it was just amazing.” He added: “The view of the mountain range was beyond my wildest dreams.”

An outdoor adventure cameraman, Leo Dickinson is no stranger to Mount Everest (8,848 m), having filmed Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler’s trek to the summit without supplementary oxygen. He has made a film about a team of canoeists who started 800 metres below Everest Base Camp and rode a freezing river down the mountain. Leo has also had airborne adventures around Everest prior to this record bid. In October 1991 he filmed the first successful balloon ride over the summit of Mount Everest, propelled over the peak by the powerful and volatile jet stream.

The three skydivers are waiting for confirmation from Guinness that they have beaten the existing the high-altitude landing world record. Last year, sky divers successfully landed on a drop zone near Everest at 3,765 metres, way below the altitude of this month’s jump.

The Nepal government permitted the daredevil record attempt and are considering proposals to run regular parachute jumps in the air space around Mount Everest. It is part of a scheme to expand tourism to Nepal for Visit Nepal 2011, building upon the visitors brought by the popular Everest Base Camp Trek experience.

Kirsty Parsons is the Marketing Coordinator for Everest Base Camp trek, an adventure website which features the classic Everest Base Camp Trek, as well as several alternative Everest trekking routes in the Himalayan region.

The Everest Base Camp Trek takes you through an unforgettable environment with challenging trekking and scenery to get your heart pumping. But each year, there are a select group of endurance runners who choose to take this trek to the next level, adding to the experience the adrenaline of a race and exertion of running at altitude.

The Everest Marathon is no normal marathon. At altitudes ranging from three hundred to five hundred metres above sea level, it is the highest in the world. This sets it apart from other running events. First of all, the terrain is unlike the tarmac and paving of more conventional marathons. The route goes cross-country, along rugged, undulating dirt trails. Secondly, the race is sloped, as you would expect from a race that starts just a few hours walk from Everest Base Camp. The Gorak Shep plateau is the starting point, at an altitude of 5184 metres. The route then descends largely along the Everest Base Camp Trek route until Namche Bazaar, the mountainside Sherpa village at 3446 metres. This means, at least, that the race is largely downhill, but with some steep slopes and uneven terrain, the race is more in the realm of the fell runner than a marathon runner.

Training for any long-distance event is hard work, but the altitude plays a big part in this endurance event. Even people walking the trails in the Khumbu occasionally experience difficulties, so running in this environment can be even more demanding. For this reason, competitors from outside Nepal are invited to join an Everest Base Camp Trek for the days leading up to the race. On the trek, they can benefit from the gradual acclimatisation as the trail rises steadily from Lukla airport to Mount Everest. With incorporated rest days and an even pace, the trek is a good way to get your body used to the environment.

Acclimatisation is so important that prior to the race the runners will often prepare themselves by trekking to the summit of small mountains near the head of the Everest Base Camp Trek, such as Kala Pattar (5623m) and Gokyo Ri (5483m) a few miles away.

It is no surprise that, being better used to the altitude, the first few runners to reach the finish line are usually Nepalese, sometimes finishing more than half an hour ahead of competitors from overseas. In 2007, the winner, Lok Bahadur Rokaya, ran a time of 4 hours and 12 minutes. The last participant to finish took a little under twelve hours, but this is still impressive since they covered the majority of the Everest Base Camp Trek route, which takes around two weeks to walk.

This year’s race will be the thirteenth to take place since its conception in 1987, with about eighty runners competing. Thankfully, after running 26 miles, they don’t have to trek back to Lukla airport from Namche Bazaar, instead making use of the high-altitude airstrip at Shyangboche, nearby.  Not only does the Everest Marathon provide an exceptional challenge but it also raises substantial amounts of money for charity.  To date, over £450,000 has been raised which has been used to support health and educational projects in Nepal.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

The first woman to trek from Everest Base Camp at an altitude of 5,360 metres to the summit at 8,848 metres above sea level was Junko Tabei. She had to conquer more than the formidable mountain; she first had to overcome the prejudices of the age. Japan’s deeply conservative society of thirty years ago would not accept that Junko had any business even attempting to trek up Everest. “Some people really tried to stop me, but I knew I could do it. In the 1970s, in Japanese culture, the status of women was much lower than it is now.” On May 16th 1975 Junko proved her critics wrong, becoming the first woman to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain.

When it comes to climbing mountains, Junko Tabei is a bit of a traditionalist herself, criticising the infrastructure that has been established on Everest since the days of her climb. She has doubts about the services of Sherpas, who tend to the needs of the climbing teams at Everest Base Camp, trekking up the mountain ahead of the expeditions to fix ropes and ladder bridges across the crevasses, and making repairs to the route. It’s undeniable that anyone who takes the Everest Base Camp Trek or makes a summit bid of Everest is appreciative of the expertise of the Sherpas and mountain porters, but Junko argues that this is not in the spirit of the true climbing experience: “When we climbed, everything had to be done by our own team”.

Junko has continued climbing long into her sixties and in 1992 was the first woman to complete the prestigious Seven Summits series of climbs. Completing this challenge means climbing the highest peak in each of the world’s seven continents.

Another woman to complete the Seven Summits is Oh Eun-Sun, a Korean mountaineer who has made this new this year for her attempt to conquer all of the “eight-thousanders.” This means summiting all fourteen of the world’s peaks above 8000 metres. A select group of just 17 climbers has been verified as having achieved this feat. Her successful Everest Trek was in 2004, and in August this year she completed her thirteenth of the eight-thousanders: Gasherbrum (8,080 meters) in Pakistan.

Other famous female mountaineers whose names you might hear on the Everest Base Camp Trek include Lydia Brady, Alison Hargreaves, and Rebecca Stevens. Rebecca Stevens was the first British woman to reach the summit of Everest in 1993, and she wrote about her experiences in her book “On Top of the World.” Lydia Brady from New Zealand has been “on top” twice, with a wait of twenty years between her expeditions of 1988 and 2008. If this isn’t remarkable enough, spare a thought for Alison Hargreaves, who not only made her Everest Trek without the assistance of supplementary bottled oxygen in 1995, but also conquered the mountain without backup, as a solo climber: a real example of “sisters doing it for themselves.”

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.