Dispatch #1 Himalayan Guides 2003 Everest Expedition

The team will begin to assemble in Kathmandu on 21st March. The first to arrive will be Henry Todd (team leader) and Vicky Jack (team member). I (Ian Mackay) will arrive in Kathmandu on 24th - if the conflict in Iraq does not affect flights from Europe!

I don't intend to stay in Kathmandu for very long, the risk of contacting debilitating tummy bugs increases with the duration of your stay there. I've been to Kathmandu many times before so I don't have to do the tourist thing - visiting  Durbar Square, the Monkey Temple etc. I will, however, pay a visit to the Great Stupa for some spiritual uplift.

Weather permitting I'll fly to Lukla on the 26th to begin the trek up the Dudh Kosi valley. Things have changed quite a bit since the first time I was there 8 years ago. Apart from the great increase in the number of lodges, many of them up to Namche Bazar now have electricity. Prior to the introduction of electricity, lodge life finished early in the evening. You'd eat your meal around sunset (about 6 pm) and sit round the stove by the light of a kerosene lamp for an hour until the fire inside the stove died down, then off to your bed by about 7.30. With the advent of electric light, there is a tendency to sit round the stove until as late as 8.30.

Henry is heading up the valley a couple of days before me because he's attending the wedding of a Sherpa friend in Khumjung on the 28th. The team will all meet up in Khumjung once the celebrations are over and we'll continue our trek up to Pangboche where we'll pick up much of our Base Camp gear from Henry's gear store there. After Pangboche most of the team intend to do an acclimatization climb to the summit of Island Peak. Our schedule should take us to Base Camp round about 6/7th April.

Ian Mackay QC