A Journey to Everest Base Camp
1 – Lukla — Surrendering Control at the World's Scariest Runway
The journey to Everest Base camp begins with a rough gut-check at 2,845m, on a slab of tarmac just 527m long, pitched uphill like a ski jump without snow. Tenzing-Hillary Airport (known as Lukla after the town it's in) ends in a stone wall on one side and a 600-m drop on the other.
If Lukla looks roughly made, it's because it is. Hillary bought this place off some farmers for a few thousand dollars and then paid another group of farmers to dance up and down the slope (with the help of cheap local alcohol) until the ground was flat and hard. Pilots land by eye - and there are no second chances here. In fact, the exact plane I landed in here 12 years ago crashed just a few years later.
But Lukla is the Khumbu's aorta: a sliver of a runway that launches up to 40 flights and 20 helicopters sorties into the sky each day, supplying roughly 45,000 visitors annually, and handling every sack of rice, solar panel, or beer keg they need on the way. When the clouds close this artery, the effect is instant and brutal - within a week of cancellations local shopkeepers report shortages of basics like rice, meat, and vegetables.
Everything that does arrive must still be carried uphill: porters charging about US$0.36 a kilo lug 50–80 kg loads from Lukla to Namche competing with yak and mule trains doing the same. Cut off this airport, and the entire Everest corridor stalls - lodges ration stove fuel, construction halts for want of plywood, even prayer-flag vendors run out of string. Lukla isn't just a gateway for trekkers; it's absolutely critical for these parts.
Up here weather is the real air-traffic controller. Blue skies in Kathmandu can still mean fogged-in misery up there, so flights stack up on the tarmac in Kathmandu while trekkers trade gossip over stale instant coffee and anxiously look out the window. Some wait a few hours to fly, others a few days; only the pilots know what's happening. When our turn finally comes to fly in, the pilot dives into a narrow gorge, levels out at treetop height, and slams the wheels onto the tilted runway. Everyone applauds, and the collective pulse rate hits alpine levels before a single step of hiking.
It's an early, humbling lesson - you're in the big mountains here.
2 – The Namche Hill — Where Lungs and Egos Get Tested
A steel spiderweb called the Hillary Suspension Bridge sways 135m above the frothing Dudh Kosi, prayer flags snapping in the wind. On the far side begins the famous grind - the climb to Namche Bazaar (3,440 m), an 800m climb over barely two kilometres. A climb that will keep you grinding for the next two hours (or more).
Welcome to the Everest base camp trek - I hope you came prepared!
Half an hour in, the air thins and egos evaporate. Hikers slow to a shuffle, office-workers discover new flavours of pain. Sherpas scarcely five-foot-five march past you, balancing baggage that pushes 60kg on a namlo head-strap. Every switchback offers a fresh chance to reconsider life choices.
This is the trek's first shake-out test - the stretch that separates the selfie dreamers from the people who'll still be functioning when the air turns razor-thin higher up. It's not technical, just relentlessly uphill - you'll be familiar with this state if you've done any serious hiking. But ten minutes in, conversations shorten to monosyllables. Twenty minutes later you can pick out who trained and who lied to themselves - those still striding, those bargaining with their lungs, those offloading weight to their porters, and the miserable few already wondering about helicopters.
You could call it the "death march", not for any objective danger, but for the way it kills your ego at 3,000 metres, forcing you into that brutal one-foot-one-breath rhythm that defines life up here. And believe me it's not the hardest of the climbs you face on the route; the next leg's climb is arguably harder. But this is the beginning.
By the time the trail spits you into Namche's amphitheater of coloured roofs, everyone's exhausted and silent - but you can feel the shift. The people who make it up this hill without unraveling usually keep making it. The ones who crack here? They keep cracking, all the way to base camp. Namche Hill doesn't ruin many bodies, but it shatters plenty of illusions - and that is exactly its job.
3 – Namche Bazaar — Sherpa Capital & the Human Mule Train
Namche, the regional capital, clings to a mountain bowl at 3,440m, a maze of stone alleys where espresso machines hiss beside shops selling yak-wool socks. This is your first rest day, a mandatory acclimatisation pause, and there's no better place to spend the day idling around - this is a town! With pubs, pizza, boutique shopping, ATMs, and even the highest Irish bar in the world.
But look, there are no roads. Everything - from gas cylinders in the kitchens, snickers bars for the kids, climbing boots in the stores, plywood for the walls, or even Guinness for the Irish bar - arrives on human, yak, or a mule's back.
Let that just sink in, a small town is entirely supplied by muscle. A 100-kg load yields about US$30 after ten brutal hours from Lukla. This is the livelihood of the locals, and one reason why the Khumbu region is one of the richest in Nepal.
Morning is a parade of impossible cargo: a refrigerator door, stacks of plywood, cases of beer shrink-wrapped like contraband. In Namche, every luxury carries a sweaty backstory, and the privilege of your last hot shower was powered by yaks.
4 – Tengboche — Monastery in the Clouds
After a day's rest in Namche, you rejoin the trail as it carves around the cliffs. It's one of the most spectacular sections of the trek - not because it's difficult, but because the scale finally sinks in. The Dudh Kosi river thunders far below, while Ama Dablam, Everest, and Lhotse rise ahead like sentinels. The trail is gentle at first, a peaceful stroll past yak trains and forested bluffs, before plunging steeply down to Phunki Tenga and rising again - always rising - to Tengboche.
Perched at 3,867 meters, Tengboche Monastery sits like a crown on a ridge framed by giants. Everest looms at the end of the valley, guarded by the photogenic dagger of Ama Dablam. The monastery itself, a basic maroon structure with prayer wheels humming in the breeze, is the spiritual heart of the Khumbu. This is the highest monastery in the region, and the cultural center of the Khumbu.
Tengboche has a history of reincarnation: first destroyed by an earthquake in 1934, rebuilt, and then torched by electrical fire in 1989. That time, the world noticed. Mountaineers, foreign embassies, and even Hillary himself rallied to rebuild it. What stands today is a symbol of endurance.
Tengboche is a pause. A brief spiritual recalibration before the trail grows colder, harder, and lonelier. A pocket of reflection between the daily grinds.
On a clear morning, Tengboche is quiet. A few monks sweep the courtyard. There are no vendors, no roaring helicopters, just the low murmur of wind through juniper. Sunrise paints Ama Dablam and Everest in warm colours; you sip your morning coffee, and realise how loud your thoughts are in this rarefied mountain air.
But look west up the Khumbu valley at these sentinels, you'll see what the monks already know: the Himalayas are sacred not because they're high, but because they remind us how small we are.
5 – Dingboche — Above the Treeline and into Side-Quests
At 4,410 meters, the last trees give up. The trail crosses a silent threshold into high-altitude austerity - no trees, no shade, just wind and dust and mountains. Dingboche is a smattering of stone cottages clinging to the side of a broad glacial valley. Paddocks and potato fields lie behind rock walls, their growing season short and brutal - farming at this altitude is an act of faith.
Everything up here is harder, thinner, colder - and strangely beautiful.
By nightfall, the temperature plummets. Frost crusts everything outside. Solar lights barely illuminate the interiors. Everyone crowds around a yak-dung stove in the dining room that gives off next to no heat. You savour your tea and stare at the steam rising off it as you consider if it's too early to retire to the warmth of your sleeping bag.
Dingboche isn't dramatic, but it's a fork in the road. Go left and you stay on the standard track, same as the thousands before you. Go right, and you can take on something riskier, more personal. It's the first real decision between comfort and conquest. Either way, you'll have to earn your oxygen.
6 - Kongma La - The Road Less Travelled
Go east from Dingboche, the road less travelled, and follow a narrow trail that leads into a different kind of journey - the route to the Kongma La Pass (5,535 m).
The path peels away from the comfort of lodges and warm stoves and heads into cold silence. It climbs through stone fields, skirts glacial tarns, and goes places where even the yaks don't bother to follow. The sky feels closer here, pulled down by Nuptse towering above.
Kongma La is the highest of the Three Passes and it's relentless. No switchbacks. No gentle slopes. Just a hard, unfiltered incline where each step costs a little more oxygen than the last.
I did it as part of a 30-kilometre "fun run" loop on what was nominally our acclimatisation day. Light and fast was the plan, but by the final climb to the pass my lungs were begging for oxygen. You can feel your heart slamming against your ribs like it's trying to punch its way out. Ironically, this is exactly the kind of punishment that makes you more altitude-ready. Climb high, sleep low. Suffer now, breathe easier tomorrow.
At the top prayer flags flutter on a ridge line of shattered stone, and the world seems to fall away in every direction. Below, the Khumbu Glacier snakes past Lobuche, a pale river of rubble and ice, and behind you the great Barun Wall looms still higher than you are now. The view is earned - otherworldly.
Most people never see it. That's fine. The trail to Base Camp offers enough hardship, beauty, and awe. But for those with restless feet and open minds, it would do well to extend their journey to cover the three passes - it adds a whole new dimension to your time in this region.
7 – Thukla Pass — Hill of Ghosts
The trail works its way up a scrubby saddle at 4,800 meters, scattered with more than a hundred stone chortens - each one a tribute to a life lost on these mountains. Famous names carved on metal plaques - Scott Fischer, Anatoli Boukreev - lie next to dozens of anonymous Sherpas, all equal beneath the prayer flags whipping in the relentless glacier wind.
Thukla also represents the final landscape change on your climb - here, the world goes from green and brown to a patchwork of shattered rock and ancient ice.
Welcome to the snout of the Khumbu Glacier.
The Khumbu is a living thing, a tongue of glacier that snakes down from the flanks of Everest, plunges over a thousand vertical meters through the Icefall above Base Camp, then bends and grinds its way down the valley - right next to you for the next few days. This river of slow-motion destruction has shaped the valley, swallowing lost gear, old dreams, and the bones of unlucky climbers. The ice pops and groans; it's a subterranean soundtrack for the final stretch to Base Camp.
Crossing Thukla is a milestone. On paper, you're only a few hours from Everest Base Camp, but the world up here plays by different rules. The air thins, temperatures plummet, wind chills, legs get heavier, heads pound, and voices grow quieter. It feels like the mountain has just turned the dial up.
This is the home stretch, and it asks for everything you have left.
8 - Soundtrack of the Khumbu
Up here the world feels simpler - and that includes the sounds. The Khumbu Glacier sets the baseline, its ice groaning and cracking. Wind whistles through the mountain passes. Yak train bells provide a melody carried for miles, their clanging echoing down the valley to remind you you're never quite alone. On the trail itself, there's the metallic ding of hiking poles tapping rocks.
But this soundtrack has been infiltrated by something mechanical. The ever-present drone of helicopters - sometimes dozens in a day. Mid-mornings see the busiest air traffic, as sightseeing flights bank low over ridges for their passengers' fifteen seconds of Everest. But it's the early morning traffic that you should be concerned about. That's the sound of someone in trouble - rescue choppers carrying pale, glassy-eyed trekkers down and out of the thin air. You hope you'll never need a seat - it's a warning in doppler of the effects of this altitude.
Altitude sickness seeps in, slow and insidious. The evening before, it's just a dull headache, maybe a lost appetite, or a wave of fatigue that an afternoon nap didn't shake. By morning, the headache sharpens and nausea creeps in. Your limbs feel heavy and climbing a single flight of stairs leaves you gasping.
Ignore this, push on, and AMS (acute mountain sickness) can escalate: to confusion, vomiting, and in the worst case, fluid filling your lungs or brain. Listen to the warning signs in your own body, or else.
This is why walking days are short and the pace is slow, why every itinerary includes "rest" days. In the Khumbu, distance is measured in vertical meters, not kilometres - it's the rise. And the soundtrack - ice cracking, wind wailing, the bells and the choppers - is just a chorus to the real test: whether your body will let you climb higher, or send you home before the mountain even comes into view.
9 – Everest Base Camp — Triumph on a Glacier of Disillusionment
You arrive at Everest Base Camp expecting a place worthy of the world's highest mountain - a cathedral of ice, a kingdom at the edge of the sky. What you get is a wind-blasted scab of rock and glacier, shredded prayer flags tangled on old cairns, a few battered signs announcing that yes, you are here: 5,364m. There's no view of the summit - just a grey wall of Nuptse shadows over you. In April or May, a pop-up city of tents might sprawl across the moraine, yellow and blue nylon clinging to survival between cracks in the ice. At other times, it's eerily empty.
For a place so storied, it's remarkably unceremonious. There are no fixed structures, no welcoming committee. The climbers would probably prefer if the tourists stayed away. Everything here on this frozen patch of ice - tents, fuel, ropes, even the oxygen bottles - was dragged up by yak or porter, each kilo paid for in sweat, rupees, or risk. Garbage has always been an ugly reality; nobody wants to foot the cost in sweat to haul away the detritus left by those chasing the summit.
The first emotion is usually disappointment. There's no big reveal, no sense of triumphant arrival - just cold, thin air and a gnawing hunger. But then you look closer at the tents just past the base camp tourists signs. The climbers there are about to spend weeks, sometimes months, in this place - eating freeze-dried meals, sleeping on restless ice, waiting for the one good weather window that might let them try for the top. This isn't a finish line. It's a cold sterile waiting room for these climbers, a test of patience, a place to get used to discomfort.
10 – Gorak Shep — Life on the Fringe of Oxygen
There's a special kind of misery reserved for Gorak Shep, the highest accommodation before and after Base Camp, slumped at 5,164m on a patch of frozen earth. The lodges are plywood boxes, nailed together and punctured with draft holes, their walls so thin you can hear your neighbour turn over in their sleeping bag. The dining rooms, are crowded and low-lit, coated in a fine film of cold and condensation.
At night, the temperature plummets to -10°C, the water in your bottle freezes solid, and your sleeping bag seems useless against the cold. Sleep is a hope here, not a reality. Your lungs fight for every shallow breath. There's usually a guarantee of a headache by night.
Come 4 am, headlamps bob out the door and up the gravel, feet crunching over permafrost. The climb to Kala Patthar (5,545m) is just straight up, step after freezing step, your breath a cloud in the torchlight. Every few steps you stop, doubled over, lungs on fire, sucking in cold air that hurts your insides. But when the sun finally rises and the sky catches fire behind Everest - all is forgiven. The temperature is savage, but at this point, nobody cares.
And then, the kicker: you look up at Everest, over 3,700m of impossible rock and ice stacked above you, and you realise just how much mountain is left. You are a tourist in a land built for another species. For all the sweat, the altitude headaches, and hard beds, you're still over 3,700m shy of greatness. The true summit, the real ordeal, lies far above.
