A summary of Day 10 of K2’s Everest Base Camp Trek from volunteer Harpreet Nahal.
After a good nights sleep and a hearty breakfast, we set off for Ghandruk. A bumpy 2 hour journey awaited as the micro bus struggled to navigate the steep hills as we headed to the village. On route we had beautiful views of the Annapurna mountain range.
After arriving at the guest house around lunchtime, we headed up the steep hill to the school. The sound of loud cheers greeted us as smiling children and teachers welcomed us with open arms into a ceremony.
The welcome ceremony consisted of speeches from students and the head teacher, along with dance performances from some of the children. The K2 team were also invited to join in the dancing, which was rather entertaining! Once the ceremony was completed we taught the children the dance routine to ‘Macarena’ which they loved.
With the project kicking off tomorrow morning, the team were given a briefing and shown the two classrooms that will need renovating – painting and decorating to be precise. Afterwards, we headed back down the steep hill and had a quick dinner, before the K2 live dial in commenced!
A summary of Day 10 of K2’s Everest Base Camp Trek from walker Natasha Wannenburg.
Day 10 on our trek started off really cold, but really exciting as we are only one day away from Base Camp.
As we set off, we had a gradual path most of the way…by gradual we are referring to the “Nepalese flat” – this means ups and downs… so no flat paths.
We had a very rocky trek today, as most of our trek was purely rocks and boulders.
After reaching the halfway mark, we had a steep climb where we had gradual paths again, but this time it was purely boulders and to be honest, this was terrifying.
We also had a descent where we had a “close call” incident as one of our members slipped on ice and nearly tumbled down a very steep hill. Luckily she quickly balanced herself, and she was safe.
Today’s trek felt extremely long, although it was just half a day, but today we had exceptional views and one of the prettiest sunsets ever witnessed.
After our arrival at Gorashep (5160m above sea level), we enjoyed our lunch and shortly after a few team members set off on a climb to Kala Patha where they reached 5647m above sea level, whilst the remainder of team had a rest in preparation for the big day tomorrow.
As we go to bed tonight, we are pretty sure that every single one of us are beyond excited and ready for “D-Day” tomorrow!
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