Two more news article updates before I start talking about what’s been happening: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/teen-mountaineer-bids-to-climb-into-record-books – news article by a fellow climber in Dubai, albeit, as usual it’s seems with media, with inaccuracies.
http://vitiligoproject.org/leannas-record-breaking-challenge-for-vitiligo/ – This is a wonderful new website for vitiligo, and a really lovely article; especially proud of the quote at the end!
So, now we’re staying at the Yak and Yeti in the middle of Kathmandu. We’ve met our fellow team members, including some of the Base Camp and Island Peak trekkers who we’ll be on the same schedule as us for the first two weeks. The family members accompanying Everest climbers to base camp (5 in total!) are pretty much members of our team up that far.
Everyone seems really nice so far and comes from the States, Australia, the UK and Dubai. I still have one more person to meet who arrived this morning, and actually comes from the town we used to live in in the UK! We’re off for a welcome dinner tonight, and fly into Lukla in the Himalayas very early tomorrow morning. We’ve had a huge gear check and got cornered by a school trip from Saudi who spotted our gear and asked us to give a quick speech to the group explaining what we were up to – it was quite fun.
Other than that we’ve wandered around the shops and had a morning tour of some Buddhist temples (a revisit for both Kelly and I), and not much else. I think we’re all very exited to start tomorrow, weather providing, so will keep you posted.