Coming Down

Us flying back to civilisation!!!



These are porters bringing supplies up to higher villages and camps. This FedEx parcel is addressed to Base Camp Everest... we are thinking about selling this photo to the company. This is how meat is brought up the mountain, you'll find it called Yak steak on the menu, even though it clearly is Water Buffalo meat. The place it came from was at least three days walk from where Ebs took this photo..... a good reason not to eat meat.


These are Yaks horns (obviously attatched to a Yaks head) sticking out of a pack... we didn't ask anymore questions.



These are from one of the three days it took us to come down. Although they call it "coming down", we did a total of just over 60km in three days, up and down Himalayan trekking style, where the fastest way between two points is a direct line. These three days weren't easy as we were both a bit sick.

At Everest Base Camp and Kala Patar

This is base camp and of course the famous worlds highest backery that serves the best apple pie and choc chip biscuits on the face of the planet (the altitude may have had something to do with it). Base Camp is basically tents sprawled out on loose rocks at the bottom of a glacier, and if their is a more unhospitable place on earth we don't want to know about it. Some poor bastards have to spend 3 months living between here an the various camps up the mountain to allow their body to acclimatise.
The guy between Ebs and Richo is named Leo, the first Phillapino man to ever summit Everest, a feat that he achieved last year. This year he was working as one of the support crew for a team of three Phillapino women trying to be the first women ever to traverse from the Tibetan side over the summit to the Nepalese side. Leo had us around for some tea and a chat, and turned out to be a really nice bloke..... good luck with the Ice Doctors documentary next year mate!

There was an Aussie bloke named Blair trying to summit, but was not in base camp when we were there (not all bad as the vegemite we were going to give him we got to keep).
This is base camp and the ice fall in the background that leads to camp one (apparently the most dangerous part of the Everest ascent).
Everest is the black peak that doesn't actually look like the tallest mountain. The spikey one at the foreground is Lupste or Nupste (we were never quite sure).





The shots at the bottom are the view at Kala Patar. We awoke at 4:30am, to climb pretty much 400 vertical meters to catch the best views of Everest and the surrounding range. Kala Patar is 5550m above sea level, and was the highest point on our trek. This two hour stretch was by far the hardest, given that we were both a litlle worse for wear at the time due to this section of the Himalayas having virtually no hygene, and the oxygen is not being forced into your lungs at half the force at sea level making everything just that much harder. We were pretty estatic upon reaching the top, our Everest equivolent for now.

Trekking to Mt Everest Base Camp

Yak, and below can make out the black peak an inch from Eb's head to be Everest















Flying out of Madrid, our next stop was New Dehli, and when we arrived there jetlagged and feeling a little worse for wear, were clearly not ready for what India was going to throw at us. Within 24 hrs we had come up with a new game plan, fly to Kathmandu, Nepal, and do a 14 day trek to Everest Base Camp.

In no time, we were flying from Kathmandu to the village of Lukla in the depths of the Himalayan mountains, packs ready to go, accompanied by an Indian born, Nepalese resident guide named Prekash.

Over the next 9 days we ascended through the mountains, staying at tea houses along the way, to the closest village to Base Camp called Gorak Shep. The photo of the case above is apparently of a Yeti skull, held inside one of the monestaries along the way. The photo with both of us standing either side of a statue is at the Sir Edmund Hillary school, the rest all speak for themselves, nature n that.

Camino - Finished

Haven't blogged for quite some time now, however a fair bit has happened since our last past. One of the highlights has been that we finshed our 800km walk across Spain, and were lucky enough to be joined on the last four days of our walk by Richo's Mum, Dad and eldest brother Jim.

They met up with the two weary walkers at Portomadrin, a town just over 100km outside the final destination of our walk, Santiago. There was no mucking around once the other Howarths arrived, and on the very next day after meeting them we started the first of a series of an average 25km/day walks. Ebs and Richo knew that this might be pushing the new recruits (considering they all did it with their 10-15kg packs on), but pushed them none the less. It quickly became apparent they either a) they had been doing some serious secret SAS training before arriving on the Spanish shores, or b) Ebs and Richo had been travelling at a fairly pedestrian pace for the previous 3 weeks of walking. Whatever the reason, the three new additions punched out amazing perfomances to get the 100+km done in their 4 days. Thats not to say once we arrived in Santiago, we were all treated to a some solid relaxation time, and a few amazing meals in some pretty special places. It was fantastic to see you three, we appreciated the efforts you made to come and your efforts whilst you were here, and look forward to seeing you all back in Aus!!

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the final few days as they are safely packed away on a CD in Australia awaiting our return. We do however, have a total of 5 pictures of the roadtrip that Ebs and Richo, along with the three extra Howarths, embarked upon through the Northwest of Spain, down into a short stint into Portugal, finally ending up in heading back into Spain where we parted ways in Madrid.

Once arriving in Santiago, we attended the Pilgrims service in the Santiago Cathedral, and listened as "two Australians started in St Jean Port De Pied", was read out in Spanish by the Bishop, as amongst the travellers who started the walk from one of the greater distances from Santiago. In addition bumped into a few other people who we had seen along the way at the service, a good finish to a walk started 34 days ago.