I can’t remember where I got the idea for going to Everest Basecamp. It just sounded pretty cool at the time and something worth doing for my 30th. It wasn’t too expensive and was something I could do on my own. I’ve pretty much bugger-all experience of trekking, camping or living outdoors so if nothing else, I figured it’d be a good learning experience.
The trek was just going to be a lot of walking to Basecamp. Having zero knowledge of alpine climbing or mountaineering (or experience of altitude) means that I’d probably kill myself if I tried to do any real climbing out there.
If you really want to climb the mountain, it costs in the region of $25,000 for a permit(!)
Trivia: Over 200 people have died climbing Everest. Check out this awesome article about the ‘Death Zone’ part of Everest, where bodies are left because they’re too dangerous to retrieve.
The mountain sits in-between China and Nepal, and both are easily accessible to tourists. There’re shitloads of companies out there who will trek you out to Basecamp. The trek itself is is quite popular - if you wanted to just go see Basecamp itself, without any of the arduous walking, you can fly out by helicopter to Gorak Shep, the last teahouse on the trail.
There’re two basecamps for Mount Everest, which I didn’t even know till I sat down to write this just now, haha. Good job I’m doing my research beforehand …
One basecamp is in China (in the region of Tibet), the other being in Nepal, above India. Which one you go to kinda depends on which face of the mountain you’re planning on climbing. If you’re not climbing, then it’s probably easier to get travel visas for Nepal, given all the shit that goes on between China and Tibet these days.
So, south basecamp is where I’ll be going. It sits above 5000m and takes a coupla days to fly and trek to from Kathmandu in Nepal.