18/4/02

Hey there all you movers, groovers and yak slinging schmoozers…

Well we have just arrived in Singapore and all I can say is HYGEINE ROCKS MAN!!!!

Not only have we been hit by culture shock, but we have arrived during Singapore’s month long food festival so we are in absolute heaven….. well that is only if our bowels return to normal….

Dear God… a solid bowel motion…is that too much to ask???????!! Continue reading →

15/4/02

Hey there Yakkety Yaks and Abdominal Snowmen

Well, we’ve been back in Katmandu for 2 days now and our feet and knees are STILL sore…not to mention our bums from several bouts of diarrhea….

I actually think I set a record by not showering for 24 days AND with only one change of underwear and even that was only since I shat myself with a lovely bout of the squits….

…Now… was that “wipe with the right hand and eat with the left”???… fuck… I can never remember….

Actually in our group of up to 8 people almost all of us got sick at one stage or another and you can imagine what huge amount of fun it is to have quivering legs whilst using a squat toilet (which is actually just a gap in 2 bits of wood over a 3m hole in the ground) after 8 hours of climbing hills…..

Man, you really end up with thighs of steel just so you don’t fall in…. and I would have to say the most amazing hills aren’t just in the mountains…. we were more impressed with the mountains of sh’it that we saw in the toilets!!!!! You’d definitely need an ice axe and crampons to climb out if you ever fell in….

Still…. despite, the diarrhea, and blisters and sore muscles and busted haemorrhoids and frozen gonads…. I think we had great time…well maybe after the sore joints settle down a bit…..

…phew….you’ll have to excuse us but walking and conversations about bowel habits have preoccupied us for the last 4 weeks….

Anyways, after trekking in the foothills, at day 7 we reached Lukla, which is where most people fly into and from there, the altitude and the landscape really started changing. Continue reading →

13/4/02

Tashi Delek!!!!

Hey there dudes and dudettes and other furry animals…

Well here we are in Katmandu again after 25 days of absolutely exhausting trekking to Mount Everest Base Camp…. and all I can say is…. we are ABSOLUTELY and COMPLETELY 100% SHAGGED!!!! ….that’s more shagged than a very shaggy thing in shagsville…. which by the way is quite SHAGGED….

HOLY SHIT… was it bloody HARD or what??!!!… MAN… THAT WAS THE HARDEST THING WE HAVE EVER EVER EVER DONE IN OUR ENTIRE LIFE!!!!

In fact, there were days when the trekking was so hard that we actually cried and the tears almost froze our face off…

Dudes, we basically trekked for 25 days with hugely heavy backpacks and there were days when the temperature was minus 15 degrees and the air was so thin that we huffed and puffed and almost blew ourselves down… Continue reading →

27/3/02

HOLY SHIT!!! We’re in the f’ucking Himalayas!!!!

Just a very quick note as we are in the most remote expensive and slow internet cafe in the whole world…

We made it through the foothills of the Himalayas yesterday after 7 days of trekking, so we have joined the normal trekking route now…

We survived walking through the Moaist (terrorist) country without incident and the only danger we faced was from the yaks and avril picking up a giardia tummy bug.

We are currently in a place called Namche Bazaar at 3440m and we got some awesome views of Everest today on an acclimatisation walk

We are heading up towards Everest Base Camp tomorrow… should take us 14 days to acclimatise to the 5440m at Mt Kala Patar overlooking the base camp.

Expecting minus 15 degrees…weather is mixed but today is nice and sunny…no avalanches in this area so we are out of the danger zone except for the altitude. Continue reading →

17 march 2002

Namaste dudes and dudettes

We are currently weathering out a nasty thunderstorm in a cybercafe in Katmandu so thought it would be a good chance to send a group email and let you know how we are doing…

Katmandu so far has been an amazing and FREAKY place…

The town is filthy, smelly and crowded. The pollution is thick, and just the ride from the airport was enough to scare the shit out of us…

The streets are incredibly narrow and as there are no footpaths, you are forever dodging cars and rickshaws and motorcycles whilst trying to avoid the touts that want to sell you tiger balm or trekking guides…

But somehow, the place has charm and the people as hassling as they are, are genuinely lovely, and there is no McDonalds here which is great…

Before arriving here we had some reservations over safety as there is a state of emergency that has been called due to a civil war with some Moaist (communist) militants… Continue reading →

Thursday, 14 March 2002 6:03

Hi there to all you crazy funsters

Just a note to let you know that we are on our way to Nepal tonight…YAY!!!!!!

Our plan is to get to Everest Base Camp at 5,500m if avalanches, terrorists, altitude sickness, yeti’s or
yaks don’t get us first!

We’ve been training our arses off and since we’ve both lost about 4kg, we can now honestly say that our arses probably weigh about 4kg…

We will probably be out of touch on email for a while as it is about a 3 week walk into Base Camp and we’ll probably bum around up there for a while. Continue reading →