Reaching Everest Base Camp in Tibet involved a long drive from the city of Shigatse toward the border with Nepal. 

We broke up the journey with a pointless stop at a roadside mile marker for Highway 318 which is the longest highway in China at 5,476 kilometres. It comes all the way from Shanghai to the border with Nepal and is a hot spot for Chinese tourists to take a picture that looks like everyone else’s.

The final part of the drive to EBC involved navigating 108 switchbacks over a mountain pass. It could probably have been achieved in far fewer, but 108 is a sacred and auspicious number for Tibetan Buddhists. 

The landscape was dry and barren, with ochre coloured hills and a distant view of the Himalayas. The viewpoint we stopped at was the only place in the world where you can see five peaks over 8000m from the road. 

It was blowing a hooley on the pass and the prayer flags were flapping like crazy. We descended down the wiggly road until we arrived at an area where we needed to change to an ‘eco bus’ which would take us the final 50km to Everest Base Camp at 5200m. 

We passed through a lush green valley which was cultivated by the locals who lived in white stone houses.

The base camp was first used by a British Everest expedition team in 1921, with the first summit taking place from the Nepali side in 1953, but the more challenging north face on the Tibetan side wasn’t summited until 1960. 

The camp was very different to Nepali base camps where they have little tea houses to stay in and a quaint vibe. Instead, it was like a large area built for a festival, and designed to look like large, yak-fur covered tents, but in reality it was dozens of pop-up buildings covered in fabric. 

On a clear day, you can see the mighty Chomolungma – the Tibetan name for Everest, from camp, standing at a whopping 8848m. 

Within each ‘tent’ was a communal seating area with a heater and water dispenser, and about six small rooms. The bathroom situation was a couple of containers with pit loo toilets. Sometimes the staff would light incense and it was quite nice, but other times it smelt rancid and someone would have missed the hole and pooed on the floor. 

Once we were checked into our rooms we walked up the road to Rongphu Monastery. Some say it’s the highest monastery in Tibet, and thus the world. But our guide laughed it off and said there were higher ones. 

We were visiting on one of the most sacred days in the Tibetan Buddhist calendar, the full moon during the month-long Saga Dawa celebration. So we were hopeful for lots of activity, but it was fairly quiet, although a small group of pilgrims began spilling out of the complex as we arrived. 

They were dressed in their traditional clothes, the ladies all donning a typical apron-style skirt which is a different colour or pattern depending on whether they’re married, widowed or single. 

The monastery was fairly small and our guide began reeling off unnecessary information about when China built this and China fixed that, so I spent most of my time outside in the courtyard. It was a funny place as a lone sheep and a group of yaks stood in the courtyard, waiting for dinner. Just before feeding time, the yaks would get impatient and poke their heads into doorways, before being shooed out by a nun or monk. 

A group of Tibetan men were working on replacing the fabric trims above the monastery windows. They all wore classic cowboy-style fedora hats and had their hair plaited with a round piece of bone or shell looped through it. Most of them also donned turquoise earrings – and big smiles. I plucked up the courage to ask if I could photograph them and a couple of them happily obliged. 

Inside one of the halls were rows of monks – but they weren’t praying, they were counting huge wads of cash. I guess the sacred day brought in a lot of extra donations as they say you can get one hundred-fold good luck during the Saga Dawa period. 

I moved outside to take more pictures of the pilgrims coming and going, when suddenly our guide came to alert everyone that Everest was visible. We ran up a slope to get a better vantage point and there it was, the highest mountain in the world, rising from the clouds. 

The peak climbing window had finished just a mere few days before we visited, but even so I was zooming in on the summit, in search of tiny figures navigating the final steps to the top. 

It was a good thing we ran outside to see Everest, because just fifteen minutes later it was enshrouded in cloud again. We headed back out at sunset but the peak remained hidden, so we retired back to base camp and searched for a place to have dinner. The only option was a canteen which offered a basic, overpriced buffet or hot pot, and we didn’t fancy either of them. Luckily there were two mini market shops, along with a miniature bank, so we purchased a pot noodle each. After all, sunset was at 9pm so we’d almost gone past the stage of hunger and the altitude wasn’t helping. 

We took our pot noodles to our tent and that’s when a Singaporean guy in our group let us know that his friend wasn’t doing well. He was suffering pretty badly from altitude sickness, becoming disoriented and his nails started to turn blue, suggesting a lack of oxygen. 

The previous hotels we’d stayed in in Tibet had oxygen available in the rooms. But when our friend came back to our tent at base camp, he said they only had oxygen available at reception which closed at 10pm. His oxygen levels had dropped to 64% so they hooked him up, but said he’d need more throughout the night, offering a backpack-style tank which he could take with him, at a cost of course. 

His face was pale but his levels were getting better by the second. But the situation made me concerned. I was already short of breath and had a pounding headache – what if I had trouble during the night and there was no oxygen available? 

Then our Malaysian friends returned to the tent with a new drama unfolding – the lady had tripped over a low-lying cable while holding two bowls of pot noodle filled with hot water. The contents flew in the air and she slammed down on her knees in the dark alley. Luckily she didn’t burn herself, but her trousers were very scuffed up. 

By 11pm we lay down in our beds, but I couldn’t sleep, I was suffering from the most excruciating headache of my life. I tried pressing my fingers between my eyebrows and on my temples to help ease the pain but nothing was helping. 

Every time I moved positions it felt like I’d just completed 100 sit-ups. Then I began having hot sweats, feeling uncomfortably hot in a cold room. 

At 2am I took some paracetamol and lay straight back down, and that’s when Craig knew I wasn’t doing well, because normally I would take tablets with food and make sure I sit upright for ten minutes. But my head hurt too much to care and I couldn’t wait for the sun to rise so I could get some oxygen at 8am. 

It felt so irresponsible of our guide to not have any backup oxygen available or check how the guests were doing. 

Craig didn’t get any sleep either, mostly because he was concerned about me and spent the night listening to me breathing. 

At around 6 a.m., I got out of bed, my mouth was so dry it felt like I’d eaten a sack of graham crackers while sitting in a desert for three months without any water. 

With puffy eyes and short breaths, we slowly plodded towards the monastery to watch the sunrise. It was a little anticlimactic, as Everest was only just poking above the clouds. I was worried that we wouldn’t get to see the mountain in its full glory, which would be a big shame after having such an insufferable night at the camp. 

Reception was opening soon though so we headed there to get some oxygen. The man tested my levels and I was down to 70% which was low enough for him to be concerned and hook me up to a tank straight away.

I felt so much better after just ten minutes of breathing in the oxygen, and eventually my levels jumped up to 86%. 

A very simple breakfast of boiled eggs and porridge was served in the tent canteen before we got another announcement “EVEREST IS OUT!” 

This time, even more of the mighty mountain was visible, so we walked to the end of the road to take some photos as more and more of the mountain was revealed. It was an incredible sight, with thick slabs of snow clinging to the sheer walls. 

I can’t imagine how tough it would be to summit after feeling the effects of altitude sickness at just 5000m. 

The view of Everest became better and better until a huge chunk of the north face was visible – what a sight to behold. 

I didn’t want to leave but soon enough our guide was ushering us to pack up and get back on the eco bus to leave the area. Part of me was delighted though, as it meant we would be losing elevation and my headache would ease.