Touching Base With Everest

Crazy ideas can reach any heights. When Dr. Ashutosh Bodhe wanted to shoot a photograph of the full moon rising, he decided to climb 5000 odd metres to do it with Mount Everest for backdrop…

"Bring only yourselves, take only photographs, leave only your footsteps"
- Motto of Everest Base Camp

View of Mt. Everest from Kala Pathar All Pics: Dr. Ashutosh Bodhe

If the almanac was right, the brilliant full moon would be seen rising over Mt. Everest on Kojagiri Purnima, that fell on October 24, 2004. And I simply had to capture that moment on camera. Since this would not be possible from Everest Base Camp (EBC), I planned to pitch a tent overnight somewhere close to Kala Pathar, some 200-odd metres above EBC.

I, therefore, gathered a band of 10 enthusiastic students and a faculty member from Manipal Teaching Hospital in Pokhara, Nepal. While the students and I provided the enthusiasm, my colleague, friend and mountaineer, Dr. Ravi Shankar, would supply the expertise.

The few weeks of meticulous planning included obtaining permits and getting our bodies into shape. We set off on October 16, 2004 and our adrenaline started flowing long before we took our first step of the trek, on the 25-minute flight from Kathmandu to Lukla - a popular starting point of the trek to EBC. Our 18-seater virtually dropped out of the sky into a narrow valley surrounded by a gallery of towering mountains onto a runway that was nowhere to be seen.

Panorama enroute to Thyanboche	Camp site at Chhukung (4,730 mtrs.)
Ama Dablam peak reflected in the window of the Everest View Hotel at Shyanboche	Thyanboche Monastery
Lunar like landscape before Khumbu glacier	Taking a breather enroute to Dingboche with the Khumbila peak in the background
Sweeping vista of Everest (center) and Nuptse and Lhotse (on the right) from Kala Pathar	Willy Benegas, four time Everest summiter (in the center) with his buddies at Dingboche

Lukla (2,800 metres) was a trailer of sorts of the 12 days of trekking that lay before us. Our first target on the trek was Namche Bazaar, a long arduous climb for nine continuous hours. We seemed to be climbing forever, all sinews, even the ones I didn't know existed, protesting at full cry. The path was busy with trekkers and locals plodding in either direction. We finally made it to Namche (3,420 metres) by sundown on the verge of collapsing. Namche turned out to be a place beyond our wildest expectations, offering travellers everything you could ask for at that altitude - hot showers to German breads to satellite uplinks to Internet cafes, bistros and colorful markets. The morning light revealed a small town set in a beautiful semi-circular layout against the backdrop of the majestic Thamserku peak. We spent the day doing a return side trek to Shyanboche (3,800 metres) for acclimatisation.

Gurgling stream enroute to Namche Bazaar	Mani Rimdu Festival celebrations at Thyanboche Monastery

Another day heralds another climb and today it was Deboche (3,800 meters). The small lodge that we decided to put up at was cold and breezy and it is here that we re-learned the theory of relativity, as we know it. The cost of living goes up exponentially with every 100 metres you climb and a boiled egg on the menu at Rs. 50 made me feel a little less famished.

We moved on to Dingboche the next day where we spent the day at Snow Lion Lodge and while resting our weary bodies, we occupied ourselves by devising a new game of distinguishing grazing yaks from the boulders. Next day once again we side trekked to Chhukung (4,730 metres) and back. I was up at 5:15 am the next morning, eager to shoot the sunrays streaking through the snow-clad peaks. Breakfast over, we headed off for Dhuglha (4,620 meters), our next night halt. The place had just two tiny lodges and we tumbled into one of them to enjoy the hospitality of Tashi Tshering, the first sherpa to scale Mt. Everest twice with different teams on consecutive days. We trekked along winding paths almost all day to reach our destination, the tiny hamlet of Gorak Shep (5,160 metres) around 3.00 p.m.

On reaching Gorak Shep I asked my team members whether anyone would be interested in spending the night in a tent near Kala Pathar as ironically, one cant sight Mt. Everest from EBC, which lies about 500 metres ahead of Gorak Shep on the Khumbu glacier. The ambient temperature at that time was -10 degree Celsius. The count at 3:30 p.m. was ten; at 3:45 p.m. it went down to six and finally shrank to four including myself by 4:00 p.m. We decided to hurry to the top with the tent and other amenities before the numbers declined further. We pitched a tent in flashlight around 150-200 feet short of the summit of Kala Pathar.

Freezing cold would be an understatement to describe the temperature during the night. The digital thermometer read at -35 degree Celsius. The cold be dammed, I was more worried about whether my SLR Canon EOS 30 would work and if the weather would clear up. Burning camphor in trays, we sang and talked in the confines of the tent trying to keep insanity at bay. Snow fell and a gale force wind blew and yet it was so silent that we could hear ourselves thinking, speculating… We had made it till there, and survived.

Larger than life butter scotch ice cream: view from Dingboche	View of Mt. Everest (extreme left) from Everest View Hotel
View of Namche Bazaar (bottom extreme right) against the backdrop of the majestic Thamserku	Bimantha doing a jig on the Khumbu Glacier

Leaving the others in the relative comfort of the tent, I ventured out with my camera and tripod to capture the full moon rising over the Everest, in black and white. I was trying as hard as I could to control the violent shakes that my body was experiencing due to the numbing cold. But nothing worked. Mind over matter was true perhaps only in theory. And to make matters worse the weather was at its worst. By the time the weather cleared up, the moon was at its zenith, the magic moment gone! But I had no regrets for not being able to realise my dream because if you know you can do it once, you can do it again. I retired to my tent to find that some of us could snore even at five and half thousand metres! I was chilled to the bones and as I slid back inside my sleeping bag, I could hardly control my shivers. I frantically tried to keep the camphor burning and stay awake to ensure that the tent would not go up in flames. But a tired body can do only so much and I finally succumbed to the best short nap I have had till date. I woke up to the screams of "people with headlamps are marching towards the summit". In the wee hours before daybreak, we joined the serpentine line of trekkers on their way to the Kala Pathar summit located at 5,545 metres; to behold the beauty of the entire Khumbu Valley; to experience the beautiful peaks of Mt. Everest, Nuptse, Lhotse and Pumori at the closest. The senses were numb, the feet were senseless and many rushed back to Gorak Shep in order to avoid the oncoming rush of mountain sickness. Nausea, unsteadiness and intractable headache were all around. Try climbing 400 metres in a few hours in air that has only 30 to 40 per cent oxygen and you are bound to go down with altitude sickness. Sadly, I watched Bimantha, a Sri Lankan student return to Gorak Shep without finishing his ascent to the top. But yet, I admired him for his determination for attempting to make this climb after being operated for cervical spondylosis six weeks ago.

But I cannot describe, in any form, what it is like to stand in the grandeur of the Khumbu Valley and feel like a diminutive speck of life. The nearest words I can think of are 'freedom', breaking all shackles, having no boundaries. Even if I didn't get that snapshot of the full moon, I realised that I had climbed the mountain for another reason. It was the highest that I had ever been, 5,545 metres. It was like the realisation of a dream, of climbing Kala Pathar on the shoulder of Pumori and witnessing Mt. Everest across the Khumbu glacier.

The return was a welcome anti-climax. All it took was a mere three days to reach down to Lukla. On my flight back home, I had my face glued to the window as I bid my final good-byes to the mountain ranges with only one thought running through my head: 'If this was possible, why not more."