When we last reminisced to our serial adventures on a trek in Nepal we were sipping lemon tea and gnawing on some nak cheese, storing up energy and oxygen for a hike up, up and away above Gorak Shep. This was far from the last day of our trip, but it was the end of driving upwards and discovering the awesome views from higher terrain. The view was already surreal, to the point that my mind couldn’t correlate the mixture of the setting and the inhabitants. It was almost something I’d expect to see coming from a digital camera on a Mars Rover. I could just ride with my imagination though, it wasn’t hard. I don’t remember seeing a single specimen of plant life anywhere, and the barren, sandy soil had a rusty tint to it, and the thinning air sure helped to believe it.

We could already catch glimpses of the summit of Mt. Everest at that point, and you could say that we had reached our goal to see it with our own eyes. Well, if our goal just to see Mt. Everest for ourselves then we could have just turned back long before when we were at the Everest View Hotel. Actually, we could have turned back even earlier, because there is one spot along the hike up the Namche hill where you can see the the slightest scrap of Mt. Everest if the valleys clear of clouds for a moment. No, our goal was to reach an objective and pay the price to get the best view in the area, second of course to the price of reaching an 8,000+ meter peak.

Kala Patthar, as I mentioned before, really is not a grand spectacle itself. As you’re hiking into the awesome forum of magnificent summits, Kala Patthar really looks like it’s in the wrong mountain range. It almost looks like the remnant of some random volcanic rupture, as opposed to the other jagged, monumental peaks towering above the valley. Fortunately, this little brown lump of a mound is just right for those of us aspiring to mountaineering greatness, except that 18,000 feet is plenty high enough for us. For us, reaching the top of Kala Patthar was a proud accomplishment, so long as we didn’t let ourselves feel outdone by the expeditions setting out above Everest base camp.