The love of a (wo)man goes through…

e past 2 weeks Armand and I scheduled a ‘boot camp’; crossing fully packed 3 valleys linked by high passes. The route was beautiful and the result was there: we reached Gorakshep (the last village before Everest Base Camp, EBC) completely fit, strong and hungry (Yes! Good sign on altitude).

Therefore it was quite easy to find our camp April 25^th (at that time not more than 1 kitchen tent, toilet tent and 3 sleeping tents): we just followed our rumbling stomachs (maybe echoed by an avalanche at the background J ) towards the damps of the best dhal bhat in ‘EBC town’. Although lots of expeditions proclaim to have the best cook, I want to claim the title this year…

Our kitchen is like a restaurant, especially since we still were with the 6 of us at that time (in 5 days the team would be extended with 20 more persons; goodbye very luxury!!). There is all kinds of food and hot drinks on order, tasting like in heaven (I suppose…) and volumes that do hurt your stomach. What a transformation after a period where you had to pay Rs1750 (ca 20 euro) for a pot of black coffee! Who did say Rome is expensive?!

Just to give you an impression how our kitchen looks like (internet connections on the way are SOOOOO slow that the window has already expired before you can actually upload some text, let’s not mention pictures…);

The house-shaped tent (with cozy plastic windows) is completely stuffed with boxes of food items (750-1000kg in total), including 300kg of rice, 350L of gas/kerosene, 60kg onions, 60kg of sugar, 2 sqm of eggs and … a tower of canned beer. What?? Yes; ‘to offer to the Gods’. Right… At least they (the Gods/Goddesses) won’t have any occasion to get grumpy to us; it must going to be a jolly scene up there I suppose ;-)