The Laziest Person To Ever Trek Everest Base Camp
Here’s a little background on me: I’m extremely lazy, I don’t really like exercising (and especially not in my free time), I’m relatively short (5’3 or 160 cm), I like watching TV series, every day is a cheat on my ‘diet’, and before starting my trip, I drove most places rather than walking because I’m too lazy to walk the five minutes to the supermarket. I have an average body weight, an average level of fitness, I am remarkably slow and terrible at hiking, and according to the BMI scale and every bikini I have ever tried on, I’m overweight. According to a previous visited Korean doctor, I should lose 14 kilos to be healthy. Despite everything I have just written about myself in full honesty, I decided that I was going to do something that was seemingly impossible for anyone who has ever hiked with me: go on a two week trek in the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas, and go to the base of the highest peak on earth: Everest. Farfetched? Absolutely. Impossible? Not really.
Nepal is one of the few fortunate countries bordering the grand Himalayan mountain range. Hiking along any popular trails in Nepal is argued to be much easier than similar ranges despite the height of its peaks due to the commercialization of its trails. That being said, there is accommodation probably every thirty minutes of the trail where one can additionally find water and food available. Helicopter evacuation is also readily available in many places as well as wifi / cell phone network in some places. Thus, hiking on the organized trails guarantees that you don’t need to carry two weeks worth of food, a heavy tent, or water which therefore makes your life significantly easier and your pack much lighter.
Let's start with training for my trek. Well....I walked around….sometimes? I tried an organized crossfit boot camp, but I usually just ate my feelings post-workout (I remember a lot of pizza), which led to a confused trainer on the weigh-in day who thought my weight gain was because of my period since that was the only plausible reason….. I read up on Tripadvisor and other blogs that some people had trained hard and posted their routines for the trek which caused me to get cold feet. However, I proceeded to google the word “trek” which technically, according to the internet, means glorified walking and I immediately comforted myself over pizza and told myself that my lack of training was going to be fine. Everything was going to be just fine. Another post I read stated, “You can really tell who trained and who didn’t” and I’ll be honest, this resonated with me during the whole trek - my lack of training was very obvious to the people I trekked with, myself, my guide, and any passerby. I remember trying to look like I belonged when passing people along the trail, but it was definitely all a front and rather embarrassing. But, if I did it again, I would still probably not train and here’s why (besides the obvious reason of me hating exercise).
Trekking in the Himalayas is not as hard as it sounds. Like I previously mentioned, everything is already there for you in terms of survival needs and you can pretty much go at any pace you want. You can walk two hours a day or four hours a day - it’s your choice and it’s your trip. Pace yourself. If you’re aiming for a two week trip to and from Lukla, you won’t have many full eight hour days and that’s because of the altitude. The altitude is a very dangerous aspect when hiking in the Himalayas and if you don’t pay close attention to the cautions, you could become seriously injured. You have limits on how far you can actually go, so even if you wanted to do long, grueling days, you wouldn’t be able to because of the risk of getting altitude sickness. Additionally, the altitude actually allowed me to keep up with my group even though they all had double the leg length as well as double the fitness level. From first-hand experience, I can guarantee you that being fit doesn’t mean you’re immune from the dangers of altitude and you can no way in advance plan to know how your body will react until you try it.
Besides altitude, let’s talk about hiking. Although I jokingly write about my training, let me underline this, it’s not easy - it’s A LOT OF uphill. When I say a lot, whatever you imagine, double that and then you can imagine the uphill. There were many self-proclaimed uphills of doom that I had to achieve while battling an onset of inevitable headaches from the altitude over the course of week one. I will say that my second day, the hike to Namche Baazar, was my hardest hike because besides the normal walking path, it was about three hours of just steep, frustrating uphill on my unfit, chunky monkey, ice-cream-battered body. At that stage, I refused a porter because I was cheap, carried my own bag which included two lenses and my DSLR, and whined and winced the whole time. It hurt. I’d never been so tired. The altitude hit hard and I had a loss of appetite that night - a loss of appetite is something I have never experienced in my life due to a massive love of all food and thus, it was instantly discouraging. I was cold, miserable, hurting, and regretting my decision and I immediately wondered if I’d last the whole trek if every day was as bad as that day. My heart rate monitor said I’d burned around 5000 calories that day alone and then died for the rest of the trip (from overuse or the cold? we’ll never know). Now, although that day was challenging beyond belief, I haven’t mentioned the magic that my eyes witnessed through my struggle. The path that day wrapped around a cerulean river flowing magnificent glacial water beneath snow capped peaks, as well as presented numerous terrifyingly-wonderful swinging steel bridges and fairytale-like villages that were stacked along the path. It’s hard to complain about pain when you’re witnessing such amazing sites that your eyes can hardly believe. Pictures can’t even do it justice. So yes, the pain on my pizza-ridden ass was worth it, very worth it. Speaking of my behind, hiking is quite good for putting that in shape….unless of course you eat your feelings post-trek like I did…but I digress.
Typically, organized groups do about 8 days up, 4 days down. Two of those 8 days are rest days where you are supposed to complete day hikes at higher altitudes and then aim to sleep at a lower altitude. This allows your body to recuperate from previous tough days and is an adjustment process that helps avoid possible variations of altitude sickness. For example, when you get to Namche Baazar from Lukla, you’re meant to stay in Namche for a day, hike up a hill nearby, and then come back down. In my case, I lazily did half the recommended hike and took naps on my rest days as my body was not happy with me. But, as I previously mentioned, go at your own pace. If you want to do just two hours a day and take longer for your trek, do it. 8 days to the top is what the commercialization of Everest Base Camp recommends, but it’s possible to do it as long or as slow as you want. Actually, I met some Chinese guys who had a very short Chinese New Year vacation and intended on doing it in, but I'm almost certain they had to be helicoptered out with such a ridiculous and dangerous. As we were not an organized trek through a company and just hired some guy to lead us, we took our time and did the trek up at a comfortable pace of 9 days up. Of those 9 days, two days were half days - the first was due to a delayed plane and the latter because of snow making us wet, cold, and miserable. An average day was about 5 hours of hiking and the sun set around 5 PM, so we planned accordingly. This meant a guaranteed decent sleep-in, a long break for lunch, and plenty of time for rest stops and water/snickers breaks. Every tea house provided us with yak poop-powered stoves from 5 PM until 8 PM. During that time, food was happily consumed, tea was drunk, and many endless hours of card games were played to kill time. Once the yak poop-induced fire died, it was too cold to be outside our sleeping bags and we’d get in bed and either read, listen to music if anyone still had juice in their devices, or just sleep at a really early time. The only reason I would not have wanted to do the trek slower than I did would be because there would be so much spare time to kill and I’d go nuts unless I had copious amounts of books to read (I recommend bringing Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer as the book talks about many of the villages you’ll be hiking through). FYI, some of the guesthouses have electricity, but you will pay a lot to charge your devices. For anything with a battery, keep it inside the sleeping bag, so it doesn’t die from the cold.
Another aspect of trekking I forgot to mention was hygiene - or lack of should I say. On a normal, non-trekking day, I shower daily and wash my hair every three days or so. When you’re trekking, tea houses charge around 5 bucks and up for a hot shower along the trek. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but if you trek in the winter months, getting naked is not worth the shower and I guarantee that you’ll regret it. It’s freezing cold when you’re without clothes in the shacks that are hardly windproof. I, instead, recommend taking baby wipe showers to remove your sweat - just don’t forget to cuddle your baby wipes in your sleeping bag at night or they’ll freeze solid. I showered around day 7 due to desperation regarding my scabby dandruff-ridden scalp and also decided it would be a good day to do laundry in a bucket with my shower water. The shower floor was frozen solid and didn’t melt during the duration of my shower, so I had to stand on a block of ice barefoot. Due to the temperature outside, the laundry didn’t dry and it froze solid instead. All of my underwear froze. Eventually, out of desperation for non-solid underwear, I publicly laid out my underwear across my arms when the yak-poop stove came out for three hours…..just in time for twenty elderly Malaysian hikers to arrive.
Besides showers, running water for washing hands is also a luxury you leave behind after Namche Bazaar (the last developed place you’ll see). Prepare to smell and feel disgusting. You feel dirty for a few days, but you eventually find peace with your filthy self and learn to love it. You probably won’t even be naked or see yourself naked for two weeks besides a very very quick change of clothing. The toilets you come across along the trek are also a hit or miss. Sometimes squatter style, sometimes western, but usually not self-flushing unless you're as far down as Lukla or Namche Bazaar. This means that you must put your hand into a bucket with freezing cold water (if it isn’t frozen solid), grab a cup, and hope your waste disappears with some old-fashioned self-flush. If there isn’t water (which happened in at least 2 of our teahouses) you shit on top of shit on top of shit and hope to god there isn’t a splash. I suggest bringing your wet wipes to this endeavor to wipe away the shame of the things you’ve resorted to doing - hey you survived covid - YOU CAN DO IT!
During most of the trek, you see Everest numerous times, but it never seems that high because there are closer peaks which then appear higher. The day before base camp, there is an optional hike to watch the sunset over Everest from the town where you stay. I think they estimated around 3 hours for it, so half my group went and I obviously skipped it. At this point, I was pretty over it the trek and just wanted to read in a warm sleeping bag (keep in mind, I was hiking in February/low season). At that altitude, it’s tiring to just breathe, let alone walk and hike.
Anyway, the last day to base camp was really challenging. You’re trekking at an altitude around 5,400 meters and you have half as much oxygen as you would have at sea level. You’re slower, you’re tired of exercising, and you’re so fucking ready to start your descent and eat anything but oatmeal, apples, and potato soup (the few things locals can keep for a long time at that altitude).
About thirty minutes before Everest Base Camp, I just wanted to quit and start crying, but it was too cold to cry and then the tears would freeze and I’d just be in a loop of frustration of not being able to cry. With a mixture of the painfully strong wind and bitter cold, I was over the trek. However, upon reflection, I realized that the trek itself was much more than the base camp itself. Base camp was nothing more than a mere arrangement of Nepalese prayer flags on a glacier and stones sketched with people’s names and achievement unlocked dates. The struggle, the scenery, the experiences, the people, and the fresh air was the trek for me, not the base camp itself. When I started my descent, I was excited to get back to my lazy life watching series and enjoying doing absolutely nothing. Little did I know that because my hiking shoes didn’t fit correctly (which became painfully obvious when you’re going down…down….down), I’d form blisters on every part of my foot and the long long seventy kilometers back to Lukla would be an unimaginable pain worse than the uphill.
Overall, the muscle pain was longlasting, the cracking knee joints were inevitable, a desire for delicious food ached, and the filth lingered until it was warm enough to take a shower. Photos of breathtaking beauty were taken, friendships were formed, friendly locals were met, and memories of a lifetime have stayed with me. On my trek, I passed people of all ages, weights, and heights attempting the hike to Everest Base Camp. Hiking to Everest Base Camp is an attainable goal for anyone who wants to attempt it and the length of time or altitude should not be a discouraging factor. The trek isn’t as hard as it is made out to be and anyone, regardless of weight, can do it if they pace themselves intelligently. Incidentally, day by day, as you hike more, your muscles, your joints, and your body gets used to the pain you put it through and you eventually reach a sort of agreement with your body. You become more fit through the pain. When you get back to Kathmandu, take that much awaited shower, and check yourself out naked, you’ll be proud of your accomplishment. (just don’t eat a buffalo burger as your first meal or you may get food poisoning which is a story for another day…..)
