Better than Disneyland

During the Easter break this year, St Kilda Road Year 12 student Sebastian Loader-Oliver went on a trip to Nepal with his mother and brother, trekking for 19 days from Lukla to the Base Camp of Mt Everest. He not unexpectedly confirms this as the most amazing trip he has ever undertaken. This remarkable adventure had been the brainchild of his mother for quite some time. I will never take you to Disneyland, she had told him, but someday I’ll take you to Everest.

This trip finally materialised as an 18th birthday present for both Sebastian and his brother, and is undoubtedly something that the three of them will never forget.

The trek started with the trio flying into Lukla, statistically the most dangerous airport in the world, in a small Twin Otter 14 seat plane. Mum, Sebastian insists, was mortified by the steep runway on the side of a mountain. Lukla was where the trek commenced, and took 19 days, with sometimes up to 10 hours walking daily. The first few days they saw some fairly stunning scenery but they were relatively uneventful, the pace not being too fast or the gradient too steep. But this all changed on day five, with the walk up to Namche Bazaar, the current Buddhist capital of the world since China’s occupation of Tibet. The walk up to Namche was a 5 hour slog up hill, zig-zagging through the mountains with a relentless gradient. Sebastian recalls, it was the first time that we were really pushed, and got to know what the trek might truly hold, and it was here also that the altitude sickness also started to kick in. The highlights for the party were also the toughest two days trekking to Everest Base Camp and seeing all the activity of climbing parties getting ready for the Everest ascent and the climb up to Kallar Pattar. With both mother and brother struck down by a mystifying illness, Sebastian rose at 4.00am in Gorok Shep to climb Kalla Pattar to see the sun rise over Everest. It was without doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done, he insists, with oxygen at around 45% and temperatures well below freezing. We rugged up and soldiered up this mountain in the dark, toes lost their feeling within minutes (double layer socks next time, and yes, there will be a next time), and fingers the same. Once I reached the top I stopped and waited, a little disappointed in the dark. But once the sun had risen, that all changed. The sun shone its rays over Everest, and it was clear that we were at the top of the world. It also became clear why it was so hard to get up here, you had to earn this view, and I and the others along with me certainly felt like we had.

One of the most beautiful things from the trek, Sebastian now remembers, was not the raw physical beauty of Nepal, but also the way in which he saw the group bond, previously all complete strangers, with the biggest components being a trio (like the Loader-Olivers) and a couple of lone wolfs thrown in too. The thing that needed to be considered at the time is that we were, and are, all like-minded people, and after the first couple of hours walking, fell in sync as a group. We had transformed from a trekking group to a trekking team, supporting each other through the rough patches, sharing stories and some great laughs. We all earned our celebratory Everest beer at Namche on the way down!

And for the record, Sebastian did much of his trekking kitted out in his Wesley shorts.