Maybe someday I'll get all the pictures up!
This was our first day! We were clean and looking forward to the hike, little did we know... Those are Ram's fingers, you'll be seeing a lot of those if I ever get the pictures all up!
How pretty is that! We only hike about 2 1/2 hours the first day, it was relatively flat and gorgeous! We arrived at the first village we slept at and I was thinking, this should be easy, cold, but easy... couldn't have been more wrong!
Could it be any prettier?
This was Ram, Buddah and I and my first view of Everest. It was weird though, because of the angles and where we were and where Everest was situated, it never appeared to be the biggest peak... but, it is! We had a huge photo shoot of us and were so excited to actually SEE Everest. Every day the clouds would always roll in at some point. This day was an acclimitization day, which is code for the most impossible hike ever... and we were meant to go to this spot we were at and then up to Everest View Lodge, where we could order a drink (Hot chocolate, coffee, tea, not beer or wine...) and see a great view of Everest. Katie and I got worried that the clouds were coming in and literally ran along these ridiculously steep edges, up and down these climbs and were barely breathing by the time we got there. But, we did beat the clouds and had another photo shoot... By the way, the people that walked got there in time too...
We called these guys Hasulee's, which means smiley in Nepalese (I'm SURE that is not how you spell that word). These guys were AMAZING! They carried all of our bags, which were ridiculously heavy, and also smiled and were nice the whole time. They weren't taking medication for altitude sickness, or complaining of headaches, or the cold... Amazing.
Just another view of Everest... all in a days walk...
Thought I'd try the black and white features of my camera. I tried the panoramic thing too... as soon as I get my computer back I'm going to have to see if it worked!
Me, drinking water... I became obsessive about drinking water after we met a bunch of people that tried to make it to base camp and didn't. We were at this place (with the worst toilet on the trip, or at least one of the worst) and all the people we met were on their way down. Everyone was saying how cold, windy, awful, it was. Nobody was trying to be negative, but they kept saying things like, well, I'm sure you read about the naseau, headaches, not sleeping, loss of appetite, and I was nodding my head yes, but thinking uh, no! Didn't even cross my mind this would be hard or that I wouldn't make it... Anyways, one guy said you were supposed to be drinking 1 liter of water for every 30kg you weigh, + 1 liter for alttitude adjustment + 1 liter for additional exercise that we are doing. That's a lot of water! I already don't like drinking it, and get up a zillion times a night to go to the bathroom, and at this point, getting up in the middle of the night is TORTURE. Not only is it freezing cold to get out of your sleeping bag, but it takes forever because you have to add all these layers, find your wipes and hand sanitizer, hope you don't slip on the frozen pee or vomit because of the smells and all this while you're indescribably tired. Anyways, in an attempt to not have to get up at night, I thought it would be best to drink all this water by 3:00 in the afternoon. Needless to say, it made me feel incredibly sick and that ended after a day... and I was up all night anyways.
It's all kind of backwards the way the photos were posted, but now if you look at it from this one down, it should be almost in chronological order... I do plan to eventually put up a day by day thing with the appropriate photos... we'll see. I'm sure it'll be great, just like the scrapbook I have of my second semester abroad in 1997...
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