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View from Cho La, 5420 m

From Kathmandu to Jiri, it is an 8 hour bumpy bus ride (we rented a car and did it in half the time!).  Once on the trek, we stayed in many of the villages listed on the map above.  The first week of trekking was up-down-up-down (and repeat!).  After a week, we had climbed the equivalent of Mt Everest (29,000 ft) and we were still at the elevation we started at!   Then it was up and up to Gokyo.  From Gokyo (15,700 ft), we climbed Gokyo Ri (5357 meters or 17,575 feet) and got a wonderful view of Mt. Everest.  Not shown, is a route we took from Dragnag over the ChoLa (pass) at 5,420 m (17,782 ft) and down to Thugla (see map above and view from Cho La).  The ChoLa was a real challenge - hard work and hard to breathe.  Onward, the trail basically ends at Gorak Shep.

Near Gorak Shep is Everest Base Camp and Kala Patar.  Because of the glacier and ice fall one cannot see the summit of Mt. Everest from base camp and it is dangerous to venture further without proper equipment.  Not much to see so we chose to skip the day trip to base camp.  Learn more about Mt. Everest here.   We did climb Kala Pathar (18,470 ft) and were treated to an awesome view of Everest at sunset.  From Gorak Shep, we chose another high pass, the Kongma La (18,150 ft) that took us over to Chukung Ri.  More climbing, more adventure.  Then, it was head back down to Lukla where there is an airstrip.  We returned to KMD by Yeti Air on Nov 18th.  It was fun flying over the area that we trekked along during the first week.

Everest movie list: Part 1: Jiri to Lukla, Part 2: Lukla to Gokyo, Part 3: Gokyo to Gorak Shep, Gorak Shep to Chukung, Chukung to Lukla (last three videos coming sometime in 2019)