The Best Travel Adventure

Trekking to Everest Base Camp

I had travelled through the Sahara and had explored Timbuktu, had marvelled at Iguazu Falls and the Perito Moreno Glacier. I had lived and experienced life in Milan and Buenos Aires. I was about to set out on a trek that would be the travel adventure of my life, but I didn’t know it.

I sat crying on our couch. My husband and trekking partner wanted to go out on a final training session. I was exhausted from training five times a week and I wanted to cry even at the thought of it. So I cried. He’d pushed it too far. He designed the training plan so we would make it to Everest Base Camp without feeling pain all the way. I had named him The Trainer he had trained us so well.

He had also researched, planned and organised the trek. Now he was weighing my pack and contents and being tough like the The Trainer could be. I could take 5.5 kilos in my back pack and my little pot of lip moisturiser had not made the cut I cut. I would be carrying it up the hills. So I sat on the couch crying with exhaustion and at not being able to take my only luxury item on a trek I didn’t want to go on in the first place.

That was November 2013 just before leaving for our first trek attempt to Everest Base Camp. In my fifties I was feeling fitter than I had ever felt in my life, had trained for over six months and in preparing for the trek attempted things I had never tried before. My first 5 kilometres run, for one.

Four weeks later back in Melbourne, despite having not reached our destination it was still the most amazing travel adventure of my life. I was glowing. I wanted to tell the world what am amazing experience I had had. We planned to return and reach Everest Base Camp. If you don’t succeed the first time try again.

In 2015, we trekked again and we made it. We made it. And it was the best.

The photo Base Camp at our feet and Mount Everest above the Trainer’s head with that stupid yellow wig. Obviously the weight standards dropped on the second trek. He snuck the wig into our luggage and into his pack all the way to Kala Patthar and Base Camp. And into all the iconic shots.

See me reaching the top of Kala Patthar

The 2015 Trek – day by day 

The 2013 Trek – day by day