Acclimatisation day- 14th

Having just arrived at 9000ft, we were given a day to acclimatise to th altitude. This consisted of a relatively easy 3 hour traipse up the trail we would be taking the following day followed by a brief lecture on on camp placement and hygiene.  The walk took us up through the wooded slopes of…

Return to Civilisation- 27th May

Last night we got back from the glacier and reached HMI. I finally have phone signal, charge and some spare time, so I will be catching up with the blog. I was using an old school notebook and pen whilst I was at Chaurikhang, so I have some notes, but many were written with a…

Winding roads- 12th May

Early morning, bags packed, a hurried breakfast and lunch stuffed into mess tins (copious amounts of chhola, poori and suji halva [chickpeas, flatbread and semolina sweet dish]), we crushed ourselves into jeeps for the six hour journey from HMI Darjeeling to Yuksum, the first capital of Sikkim. This proved to be deceptively easy start to…

Goodbye connectivity!- 11th May

Today is the last day at Darjeeling- tomorrow we head off for base camp so I won't be posting any more updates until I get back home. I will hopefully write by hand and then type up when I return.  I won't have any signal or charging abilities and will be conserving any battery I…

Tenzing Rock 3

So I seem to end up writing about fear every day!! But I guess that's partly because I'm a scaredy cat and partly because a lot of what I am experiencing is terrifying.  Today was crazy rappelling at Tenzing Rock- we used just a rope on our sides, at our stomach and then also used…