Everest Challenge 2009

This is a stitch of some photos I took in Gokyo, in the Everest region of Nepal in the spring of 2007. Now I'm nearing the completion of a physical training for another trek, this time with two friends. Ahmed, a former Olympic swimmer, and Narcu, my co-worker, are carrying out their own training to join me for a two month adventure, which will take us across India and into Nepal, from where we hope to trek to the foot of Mount Everest and cross the mountain pass of Cho La into the stunning Gokyo Valley.

This time round, we hope to walk at a more leisurely speed to enjoy the mountain scenery. We plan to stay at the monastery village of Tengboche to film the life of the people there for a documentary Narcu and I are making, and will also capture parts of the trek on high-definition.

All three of us have been training hard for nearly two months now, involving a rigourous strength and endurance programme. Although we do the training independently, we do meet once a month to walk round Hulhumale together, carrying a backpack with a progressively bigger load each time. We started off with under 5 kg and have now raised the load to 8kg. Before the end of the training, we hope to raise it to 10kg and walk round Hulhumale 4 times (more than 22km) in 4 hours.

I've based the training on the programme developed for the 2007 trek by Zinan and Hussein who, sadly, are not available to supervise us this time.

As I did before, I hope to update the blog regularly for the duration of the trek.