OUR Everest expedition was a pilgrimage for me. After three years of training and planning, it was all I looked forward to.
We arrived at Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, and took a domestic flight to Lukla, a quaint town that is the traditional starting point. The airport runway is a mere 200m strip that starts at a cliff's edge and ends with a flimsy brick wall. Approaching the cliff in the tiny twin propellor aircraft was just one of many scary moments.
Trekking from Lukla to Everest Base Camp took 10 days. The altitude started from 2,500m and ended at 5,500m. The thin air caused headaches, nausea and loss of appetite. But it was here that we first saw Mount Everest looming in the distance, with plumes of clouds surrounding its summit.
A sherpa putting the finishing touches for a puja, a traditional ceremony to appease the mountain gods for a safe passage.
At the base of this legendary mountain, we were greeted by a huge, messy field of ice blocks and rocks. This was
home for the next two months. Staying here was no mean feat. It's higher than Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain, and about 54 times higher than Bukit Timah Hill, our main training ground in Singapore.
Acclimatising to the high altitude was a challenge, as the body took time to adapt and develop red blood cells to cope with the lack of oxygen.
While it is a common perception that Mount Everest is a lone romantic mountain with minimal human presence, the
reality is that each year, it is populated with at least 300 climbers from various international teams with varied mountaineering experience. Climbing the mountain is not just navigating through the obstacles but also dealing with different expectations and cultures from other climbers.
Climbers set up home at the Everest Base Camp.
There are four camps between the Base Camp to the summit at 8,850m, and each camp is about 800m apart in height. Climbing between the camps takes between four and 10 hours. Steep terrain, crevasses, snowstorms, possible avalanches or rockfalls, coupled with physical exertion and low oxygen levels, posed steely challenges.
Often, I felt so exhausted at the end of each day I just wanted to sleep in the tent. Cooking at high altitudes was quite a tedious affair, as one had to shovel snow, melt and boil it with whatever we could throw in. It took us almost two hours to cook a packet of instant noodles. Moments of yearning for fried carrot cake and bak chor mee never failed to generate squeals of agony among the team.
Climbing Mount Everest cannot be based on a strict schedule of First World efficiency, as nature dictates its own course. Many mornings were spent in the communications tent where we had daily feeds of weather information, which helped us decide on our course of action.
Wind speeds up to 150 kmh were not unheard of, and we usually needed at least a three-day good-weather window to launch a successful attempt. Bad weather meant we ended up waiting for one whole month for the right time to make our summit bid.
It was pure agony, with the impending end of our climbing permits and the climbing season looming. When the weather window finally opened up for us, we literally made a dash for the summit.
Reaching the summit was far more dramatic than I imagined it to be. We had travelled non-stop from Camp 4, the last stretch, for 18 hours. The final slope slowly tapered, enabling me to see the other side of the mountain. The peak of Mount Everest looked no bigger than an office desk.
Yaks are the main mode of logistical transport to the Everest Base Camp.
I dashed up the last steps to the mountain, crumpled to my knees and started crying. I cried not because I was happy. I cried because I never believed I could actually do it. Three years of hard preparation and sacrifice never prepared me for the moment. I cried in disbelief, in wonderment that dreams could become reality.
People often ask me if climbing Mount Everest has changed my life: The act of scaling the mountain didn't, but the training and planning certainly did. The journey has opened me up to look forward to every experience as a learning opportunity.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on July 31, 2008.
