An Epic Clan Wander: Lockdown Trek to EBC – Part 2

Heading off into the wilderness and into lockdown was a strange and unknown emotion. We had no connectivity for the next 3 days and no way of contacting our families back home to let them know we were safe. Ultimately, we were concerned about putting our own children in harms way by continuing to walk into the mountains? This was unknown territory and didn’t sit overly well with us. However, we made the choice not to undertake a long and stressful journey home to a country that was struggling to get the COVID-19 cases under control. Plus we are a full time travel family and with no home of our own to return to, the decision wasn’t an easy one.

Sometimes in life you need to make a choice based on the information at hand, your surroundings and your gut feelings. We knew the districts within Nepal were closing down and we knew that many local people from Kathmandu were heading home to the safety of the mountains and this gave us some comfort.With our minds made up we continued onward. A strange situation to be in, we were living our dream by walking to Everest Base Camp (EBC) but within a stressful unknown environment. So on we went, sticking to our original plan.

Once we left Ringmu and managed our first steep climb over the Taksindu pass we knew we were well on our way and back on track. We aimed for 3-6 hours walking per day, keen to take it slow but enjoyable for all of us. We spent a lot of time walking in the outdoors back in Scotland; but, it’s a different scene when you’re carrying all your own kit for hours on end, day after day. In addition we were still unsure if we would actually manage the entire trek as this was our first big undertaking in the mountains as a family. With this in mind the plan was to include short walking days and plenty of rest days, although, we were soon to realise it is near impossible to have ‘short’ walking days in the Himalayas!.

The next morning after a restful night at Nunthala we started our journey towards Bupsa and onto Paiya over a couple of days. Armed with our rucksacks, sunscreen, water and walking sticks, we set off on the trail. We took it slow and steady with plenty of rest stops along the way, making the most of the teahouses en route and the hot sweet tea. The pack mules had helped make the paths very wet and muddy which added to our challenges and increased our walking time.

We were greeted warmly by all our teahouse hosts along the route. In fact, we even had common friendships from back home in Aberdeen, which was extremely comforting during those initial and uncertain few days of the pandemic. Knowing you have this common factor was a massive relief, and we were personally invited to hunker down in Paiya, if we couldn’t carry on with our trek, which was a very generous offer but we were keen to push on.

We passed very few tourists after Paiya, and those we did pass were either heading in the direction of Kathmandu before the overland transport stopped or walking onto Lukla to fly out and homeward bound. Picking up snippets of information along the way, we heard Europe was affected in a bad way and that the virus was spreading fast causing total destruction along the way.

It wasn’t until we reached Pakhepani that we were told that lockdown had officially arrived in Nepal and repatriated flights were already leaving Lukla. This is where our lockdown story begins and our 3 months in Lukla starts.