Himalayan wonders
The Everest trek without the tourists
It was the best lunch I’d ever eaten: a cold cheese toastie, a boiled egg, and some coconut biscuits that had expired six months earlier. We’d just spent six hours going up and over Kongma La, a mountain pass most people avoid because of its difficulty and danger and now, sitting alongside the Khumbu Glacier, the world’s highest, I was ravenous.
More than 30,000 people head to the Everest region of the Himalayas each year with the singular aim of making it to Everest Base Camp (EBC). They fly 35 minutes from Kathmandu to the world’s most dangerous airport – the TenzingHillary Airport at Lukla has a short runway with a cliff at one end and the side of a mountain at the other – and take the shortest route up, then turn around and rush back down the same way.
But what most people don’t realise is that the allure of base camp gives most people blinkers. Many wrongly assume EBC is the pinnacle so do little research on alternatives. However, the Everest region has a lot to offer, including glistening turquoise lakes, trekking peaks that can be summited in a few hours and have uninterrupted views of the Himalayan range and Everest and, most importantly, trails that aren’t full of people.
The EBC route takes 12 days and is like an escalator. You’re never alone, you’re always stuck behind someone or holding someone else up.
The Three Passes takes 18 days and is quiet. Simply named, the circular route crosses the 5540-metre Kongma La (‘‘la’’ means pass in Nepali), Cho La (5420m), and Renjo La (5345m), and only covers already-trekked ground in the final two days, which is why my friend Steph and I chose it.
The first few days are the same as EBC and climb quickly through rhododendron forests, across rivers via suspension bridges covered in prayer flags, and past villages where locals live year-round. Sherpas, yaks, donkeys, horses and, of course, thousands of tourists, line the trail.
On one of those first few days – in Namche Bazar (3440m), a settlement cut into a hillside that resembles a pa¯ – we met a man believed to be the last surviving member of Sir Edmund Hillary’s 1953 Everest expedition, Kancha Sherpa. Now 85, the then-19-year-old was one of more than 100 porters, paid just eight Nepalese rupees a day.
Over tea and Sherpa stew – a thick noodle soup made with whatever meat and vegetables are available – he told us how Hillary treated the porters with more kindness than anyone who had come before him and that’s why he is so revered among sherpas that he’s talked about almost as if a deity.
Three days later at Dingboche, we continued north-east to Chukhung and to Kongma La, while the hordes of EBC trekkers tacked north-west to Lobuche. The trail was instantly quieter with fewer people and fewer pack animals.
Our guide, Pasang Sherpa, told us that night he believes Kongma La to be one of the longest and hardest mountain passes on the planet. He hadn’t crossed it in seven years because none of his clients had wanted to, whereas he climbs Island Peak, a 6189m slog to the summit, several times a year.
After finishing the last of our expired coconut biscuits, we hurried across the Khumbu Glacier – where the ice was so thick the fist-sized rocks we threw down on to it from two-storey-high cliffs bounced like M&Ms – and on to Lobuche to rejoin the EBC route for a short trip up to Base Camp.
From talking to people who’d been, I knew not to expect more than a rock landing among the mountains where tents can be pitched, but Base Camp fell short of my already low expectations. We anti-climactically shuffled our way through dozens of tourists all waiting to take the same photo, only to discover, disappointingly, you can’t see Mt Everest from Everest Base Camp.
That night was our highest sleep of the trip, at a head-pounding 5180m. We spent half-an-hour at most at the top of the passes before heading back down the other side, but spending a night above 5000m is rough – insomnia, loss of appetite, and a headache that just won’t go away.
After what felt like our 100th consecutive meal of dhal baht, we joined the crowd around the uninsulated plywood teahouse’s yak dung fire that
night to try to escape the -15 degrees Celsius temperature outside. Most people were simultaneously celebrating the climax of their trip and commiserating about the imminent end – they had just three days left.
So we were greeted by jealousy and regret when we told them what we still had in store for our eight remaining days: over the Cho La, the most adventurous pass, so a common favourite of Three Passes trekkers. It’s a mars-like sunrise valley walk with Ama Dablam (6812m) framing the rear, leading to an exhilarating boulder scramble and a dash across a steep icy glacier to the 5420m summit.
After an overnight stay, we arrived at what was our pinnacle: Gokyo and the Gokyo lakes.
Gokyo Village sits at 4750m, making it one of the highest permanently inhabited villages in the world. It is beautifully situated between the Ngozumpa Glacier, the longest in the Himalayas and a holy lake so turquoise that, from above, it looks like a gemstone.
We spent two nights there, which is common, but not for acclimatisation. People stay there because it’s so beautiful. The teahouse we stayed at, the Cho-Oyu View Lodge, sits on the edge of a lake and has a west-facing dining room that provided a purple sunset among the best I’ve seen.
And with little-to-no light pollution in the area, I wrapped up warm after dinner and craned my neck upwards to view frequent shooting stars in a night-sky so packed that it resembled a Pollock.
Mountains next to villages in the Himalayas are called Ri, meaning peak in Nepali. Gokyo Ri is one of the most well known. At its 5463m summit we were treated to incredible views of Cho Oyu (8201m), Lhotse (8516m), Nuptse (7861m), Makalu (8481m) and, after 13 days, our first uninterrupted view of Everest (8848m).
The second uninterrupted view – an even better one – is from the top of the last pass: Renjo La (5345m). On one side is Gokyo in all its turquoise glory, on the other a historic Tibetan trade route and the start of the end of our journey.
That night we slept below 4500m for the first time in a week. The air felt thick, I was noticeably less puffed after menial tasks such as packing my bag in the morning. During the highest parts of the trek, where the air is thin and oxygen limited, I could only manage one step per breath up hills: In, out, step; in, out, step. On our way down, we covered ground quickly, so while we went up slowly, seeing the landscape change gradually, heading down we became aware just how otherworldly our last week had been.
Monotone grey, barren trails progressively gave way to hardy grasses, shrubs, and bushes, until we were again trekking through rhododendron forests listening to birds that weren’t crows, for the first time in more than a week. We even saw hummingbirds.
But the tradeoff was a longing for the constant panorama of the Himalayas we’d said goodbye to – after nearly three weeks our childlike wonder and excitement at every turn hadn’t waned.
In Namche Bazar, playing pool and drinking Everest Beer at what claims to be the world’s highest Irish pub, we found ourselves going through our photos to reminisce a trip not yet finished.
A French couple on their way up overheard and asked how Base Camp was. We told them it was OK, but the passes were better.
‘‘What passes?’’ they asked.
I explained, showed them a few of my favourite photos, and 10 minutes later they’d decided to switch treks.