My most ambitious trip so far, it has been on my list for several years already. The Everest Base Camp (EBC) trek is considered by all hiking enthusiasts to be the mecca of hiking destinations, simply for the fact that those who scale Mount Everest (8848M) begin their journey from there. Several years ago, I saw a video of summiting Island Peak which looked SUPER cool, as the guys were using Jumars to ascend to the summit, I hadn't used it before and it looked super cool to me so I decided to add it to the trip as it was right next to EBC.
The whole journey took 17 days from Kathmandu and back, so I'll be splitting this post into individual days and also include some tips that we learned on the journey.
Intro
The EBC region is entirely within Sagarmatha National Park. 99% of visitors start their journey by taking a flight to Lukla, where the famed "most dangerous airport in the world" is. They then hike for 2 days to Namche bazaar, a big town where all traffic converges. From Namche, the road forks into 3 different routes with the estimated number of days required below:
Standard EBC route heading toTengboche (12 days)
Gokyo Lakes route heading to Dole (13-14 days)
3 Passes trek route heading to Thame (16 -18 days)
There is a great article with a detailed itinerary of the three different routes here. The first is the easiest as it is the shortest and most direct route to EBC. However, one drawback is that the journey there and back follows the same trail. The 2nd and 3rd routes are progressively harder, but you are rewarded with spectacular views of the passes and you can see different areas of the region all in one go. I highly recommend both Gokyo and 3 Passes Trek if you are up for a challenge and have the time to do so.
On our trip, we took the Gokyo Lakes route going clockwise, and headed to the village of Chhukkung after visiting EBC to prepare for Island Peak. Initially, our plan was cross from Lobuche to Chhukkung via Kongma La pass, but we were too tired and we went to Chhukkung by dingboche instead.
Below is also a GPX file available for the whole route that we trekked. All the activities are tracked on Garmin Descent G1. No porters were used in all our hikes, so the difficulty and timing might be different from with porters.
Click on the links below for a full recount of the days we spent during the trip!
(This post is still a work in progress, I will be uploading the day-by-day posts in the coming weeks!)
Day 13: Island Peak Summit Attack
Day 14-16: Chukkung back to Lukla
Additional tips:
Packing for EBC
Food, water and other things on EBC trek
Altitude Sickness on EBC
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