Boyhood Dream
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When I was a young teenager I used to ride my bike delivering the morning newspaper to the local community. One day I had saved quite a bit of money from this paper round and I purchased a small telescope. My friends and I used to regularly meet at the letter box at the front of the house in which my family lived and we used that telescope to peer at the moon and the stars. Yes it was only a toy of a telescope but still we had a lot of |
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fun with it. We used to dream about distant places and the challenges to get there. It was about this time that I first heard about Sir Edmund Hillary and how he had climbed the highest peak on earth. From that day on I gravitated to anything at all in newspapers, magazines, books and television about adventure travel and Mt Everest. The old black and white classic, "Lost Horizon", was one of my favourites. This is the story of a group of people who crash land in the Himalayas, and are rescued by the people of Shangri-la, a place where the aging process stops or at least slows down. All this planted a desire in me to one day travel to Everest for myself. I wanted to see it and walk on it myself. This dream lay dormant for many years until one day I heard the joke that goes something along the lines....
An old man was sitting on a bench at the mall and a young man walked up to the bench and sat down. He had spiked hair all different colors - green, red, blue, and yellow. His ears, eyebrows, nose and even his tongue and lips were pierced. The old man just stared... The young man said, “What’s the matter, old timer? Never done anything wild or exciting in your life?” The old man replied, “Got drunk once and had sex with a parrot. I was just wondering if you were my son.” Hmmmm I thought, well I didn't want to end up one day being an old man sitting on a bench somewhere and being asked had I ever done anything really exciting in my life. On reflection I thought now what had I done in my life that's really exciting and it was then that I realised it was time for me to head to the Himalayas....... |
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This weblog is about this quest. It's about the realization of my boyhood dream to one day see and walk on Mt Everest. I will write about each step describing how I went about it all. How I went about determining what trekking equipment and medicines I needed, where did I shop for it |
| and finally what in the end I purchased and took with me. Was it all useful? Did I take anything that perhaps I could have left behind? Was there something that I didn't take but should have? The pic on the left shows all my gear nicely packed up in my hotel room in Kathmandu before I set off. However, I intend to open it all up for you and show all the equipment in detail. Why am I doing this? Because I think this is one of the most important steps in a journey like this and to be honest, I found it difficult to determine what I needed to take before I set off on this adventure. Yes the information is available in the public domain but I found that it was all scattered all over the place and not in one concise place or format. | |
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I will also describe how I decided on issues such as guides, porters, trekking companies. I'll also talk about my fitness and was I fit enough? What if any training did I do before hand? Any medical checkups? One of my purchases was a digital camera and through it's lens, I will show you some of the most fascinating scenery on this beautiful planet. I took thousands of photographs, and I plan to show you the best of them. I will also show you some great pics taken by others I met through this journey. The pic |
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shown here shows one of the many shots taken with Everest clearly visible in the background. Click on any image to see the shot in more detail. Also note in this image the pedometer on my waist. I will use this to describe the steps taken to reach each destination so you will have a better idea of the actual distances travelled each day.
I will also describe some of the people I met through the journey, and believe me there were many. I hope that it will serve as a useful guide to those planning the same journey. Perhaps it will be useful as a starting point as, as I mentioned above, while all this information is available in the public domain, I found it dispersed all over the place. I also hope that it might inspire others to follow and achieve their dreams. Finally, I hope you will enjoy my journey. |
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posted by Adam @ 6:20 PM
1 Comments:
Great post Adam - very, very inspirational. SG
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