Big Brothers Big Sisters Everest Base Camp Trek Dispatch

May 21, 2010 – Down from the Khumbu and Back in Kathmandu

This is Leila Silveira reporting from Kathmandu. We've had a few full days! Our team eventually got bigger since the group from Everest Base camp who were supporting Jamie Clarke’s climb were now down the valley hiking down to Lukla with us.

It is always interesting adding some new members to a team that has been together for a while. We all got along great and we had some new jokes and games on the table.

Our hike to Lukla was quite a long day; we had members all over the trail. Some went ahead and others stayed at the back just taking their time.

The weather has been raining at night and clearing up by the morning. We hoped that this pattern would remain so that we could make our flight back to Kathmandu. That was exactly what happened. We all had our party for our staff in Lukla and it was great. Andrew did a speech for our staff and Allison from Hanesbrands did a speech for the second group. In the end we all hugged and shook hands with all the staff regardless of which team they had worked for. We were one big team.

We woke up the next morning with clear skies and the news that the planes were flying from Kathmandu. We were all on the first flight and everyone was pretty excited about it. We all were looking forward to a five-star hotel, great long showers, and foot massages among other luxuries available back in "civilization."

As soon as we arrived it was fun to watch most of the members watching all the traffic and chaos that is Kathmandu. When they had first arrived the city was pretty much stopped due to the Maoist protesters; it was actually a dream city, no cars, no honking, just quiet.

Now we are all back to real Kathmandu; completely wild, live, traffic with no respect for traffic lights. You have to really watch out when crossing the streets.

It was a full day. We all stayed together for lunch at the well known Fire and Ice for a great pizza, then right afterwards we went to get a foot massage.

The next morning was sort of a rest day, except for George, Drew and David who finally had a chance to do their Kathmandu sightseeing.

Finally we all met for our farewell dinner which was not far from our hotel. We all ate and drank some excellent wine chosen by Drew, a great Tempranillo and right after dinner some of the team still had energy to party on their last night in town.

We are all ready and packed to go. Some of us are still going on another adventure, such as Doug and Andrew who will be going to Tibet tomorrow, David, Drew and George to Thailand for 10 days and the others are ready to fly all the way back home which is an adventure in itself.