Gorak Shep

Hard walking, today. The ground is very rocky, and the air is paper-thin. You breathe it in and it doesn't do anything. We got to Gorak Shep at lunch time, and my headache from yesterday had returned. I wanted to go up Kala Pattar, though, to see the views of Everest, so I lay down for a while in my tent, hoping the headache would go away.

It did. After lunch, those of us who felt able (and not everyone did) started to climb up Kala Pattar. It's a big black lump, in fact I think the name means 'black rock', and we were headed for the top.

I've read about climbing at altitude, and how you take a few steps and then take a few breaths, but I wasn't ready for the reality - four steps, six or seven breaths, four steps - at first, then later on it was one step at a time, like moving through water. I even went into a sort of dream state, at one point, and found myself being annoyed that the girl behind me was crying. Her husband was encouraging her, but my brain was saying, "Why is she whining in my dream?" Can't sustain a thought, though, really, for a while I was counting breaths and steps and thinking, I'm walking, but then it seemed I was just thinking, "I am. I am."

The views from the top were spectacular. Everest is so black, inbetween the whitenesses of Nuptse and Lhotse. You can't really see it from the valley, because Nuptse and Lhotse are in the way, you have to climb up the other side of the valley, hence our little sortie.

Climbing Kala Pattar, I think, was the hardest three hours of my life so far. And that's saying a lot, after having given birth three times, But I did it, and I've got the pictures to prove it.