Sagarmatha National Park

Few are those who have the will, fitness and stamina of climbing to the summit of Mt. Everest. Most will be happy to reach the Everest base camp but it has become quite touristy a trek and unless you're a mountaineering fan, 2-3 weeks might seem too much to spend to simply reach the base of Mt Everest. Since my main focus in Nepal was not mountaineering and I did not want to spend 2-3 weeks trekking, I opted for the Mt. Everest flight on a clear early morning to see the first rays hit the peaks of the Himalayas and Mt Everest or Sagarmatha. The trip was 1 hour long and since the flight was not full I had several opportunities to visit the cockpit for a panoramic view. All passengers have a window seat and the air hostess indicates the different names of the peaks you pass by. I travelled with Buddha Air who are known to be the best in terms of safety. Only worth it on a clear day with no cloud cover. It is surely the best flight I've ever made and you get much closer to the Everest than when you are landing in Kathmandu on your international flight. If you're a mountain fan by all means go for the Everest base camp, otherwise this is quite an interesting experience and it will get you much closer to Mt Everest.

There are no roads to this WHS, so for a visit, you have to walk in from the nearest airport - it's 2 days from Lukla. Although there supposedly are helicopter flights nowadays that take you straight to Everest Base Camp and skip all the hiking! I went on foot and did an 8-day trek known as the Everest View Lodge Trek.

I had never hiked for such a long period on end before, but in retrospect felt it was pretty easy. Day walks were never longer than 5-6 hours including lunch and plenty of rest. This trek is the same as the first part of the one to Everest Base Camp. I think I could have made it there too but must say that I already was pretty bored after 5 days. It was early in the season, not many other travellers around, and several shops/restaurants/lodges were closed. And cold it was during the night: I needed a sleeping bag plus 2 blankets! Every night we went to bed at 7.30 pm because of the cold, and because there's nothing to do in the villages.

The forte of the park and the trek clearly are the mountain panoramas. The sky was clear blue on most of the days, and I saw Everest no less than 4 times (once already on the flight in from Kathmandu). The first half of the hike from Namche Bazaar to Tengboche had the best views of Ama Dablam, Lhotse and other 7000-ers. …

Very few of us are going to reach the summit of Sagarmatha/ Qomolangma/ Mt Everest (though news of 40 climbers passing a dying man during 1 morning in May 2006 seems to indicate that it is a bit like “Piccadilly Circus” up there in season nowadays!) but the “walk in” through the WHS park to the Base Camp is available to any reasonably healthy person – it qualifies as “strenuous” but is achievable with some appropriate fitness preparation. It is not the most beautiful of Himalayan treks and some regard it as a bit of a grind but the objective and the historical connotations make it, in my view, a particularly worthwhile journey. I did it in 1976 and have always regarded it as time, effort and money very well spent - though the trek will have changed immeasurably in the intervening years and almost certainly will not now be as satisfying!

The purist might want to do the full “walk-in” but those with shorter holidays will short-cut this by flying to Lukla to avoid the 8 day trek from the road-head at Jiri. You will still need around 12 days to/from Kathmandu depending on how many detours you take and how much acclimatisation time you want in order to avoid what might be your main potential problem – altitude sickness. This flight unfortunately also adds additional uncertainty both in the form of potential weather problems (either at Lukla or at Kathmandu) as well as in getting a seat …