Journey to Mt. Everest Blog

In September of 2008 Gautam Gujral trekked to an elevation of over 18,000 feet in support of Comp2Kids. Many friends and supporters of Comp2Kids and Gautam used this blog to follow his journeys and together we raised over $11,000 to bring technology to New York City public school students. Thank you all for your ongoing support and we hope you enjoy learning more about the region with Gautam. If you would like to make a donation to provide a child with a home computer, please click on the link below.

Donate to Comp2Kids || Photos from Gautam's Trek to Everest

September 15, 2008

Beginning the End of the Journey

Children in the school yard

We packed our bags, got our gear and walked outside to the Edmund Hillary School. School starts at about 10 a.m. and the kids had gathered in the school yard for assembly and exercise. The school consists of many buildings and the money for most have been donated by foreigners. As a result kids from 1st grade through high school get an education right where they live and seem to be very proud of their school - considering that they were all wearing their school uniforms on their Sunday strolls with their families. We have some good footage of the school and assembly which we will post on this site in a few days.

After spending some time at the school we hiked out of Khumjung to Namche Bazaar for lunch. We passed the helicopter landing pad where Yaks from the Korean expedition were waiting for the helicopter to land with even more equipment that would be carried to Mt. Everest Base Camp. Since it had rained heavily, quite a few people on our team slipped and slid on the mud on the way to Namche. That was fun!

Stephen Forte : Yak Train After a delicious lunch at Namche, we set off toward our final destination for the day Phakding (2610’). We once again were accompanied by random dogs on the trail, and encountered many Yak trains. We also saw some mountain goats and have good pictures which will be added to the web site soon. At one village, we encountered groups of kids coming home from school, and spent some time greeting them with the traditional greeting ‘Namaste’ and taking photos which they were eager to see displayed on our camera screens.

At Phakding, dinner in the tea house included an impromptu performance by members of the group of Ameican songs and some Bulgarin rap (yes, there is such a thing and it sounds good) by Vasil. We paid our porters and Shepas (all cash is the way they like to get paid) and they presented us with more scarves to wish us a pleasant further journey and to say thanks. They then got us to join in some local song and dance and that was fun. We called it an early night as we were all beat and had to get up early.

3 years ago