Everest base camp, day 1: To Kathmandu

October 2014

Before I start let me tell you that this travelogue will not give full account of the trek to Everest Base Camp. The simple reason is that I could not complete it. It was my second attempt to reach EBC. Last year it was the bad weather that stopped us from starting this trek. Weather was good this year but apparently the mountains did not like us!!

Like last year, it was me and Subbu who went for the trek.

In the posts, I would like to provide information about trekking to this place individually with relatively less money as EBC is a very costly trip. One will be mainly spending on:

Our travel to Kathmandu:
The Spice Jet maintained its reputation as their flights were delayed at both Bengaluru and New Delhi!! Anyway, we reached at 6:15PM at Kathmandu. Immigration happened in a jiffy. Just went to the counter where there was no queue and told that we were Indians. They did not even look at our immigration form and just asked us to continue further.

Note: Indians do not need a visa to enter Nepal. Passport is also not mandatory. Election card is accepted.

We took a pre paid taxi to Thamel, the main tourist area of Kathmandu. It costs NPR 700/- at the prepaid counter in the airport. We had not booked any hotel in Kathmandu. Thamel it full of hotels catering to various budgets. Just land in that place and choose whichever you like. But unfortunately, driver took us to a junk hotel called Skylark. It was cheap; we were tired so we just took it.

We just dropped our luggage in the room and went outside to get some essential things before the shops were closed. It was the day of Ayudha Puja and only few shops were opened. We quickly took water purifying tablets, recharged by NCell SIM card, converted our currency to NPR and had our dinner.

Note: 1 INR = 1.6 NPR. Indian currency is widely accepted in Nepal. But it is better to have some Nepali currency in case if someone refuses to accept INR. Also, 500 and 1000 rupee notes are not accepted in Nepal and are also illegal to carry. So, it makes sense to convert INR to NPR to avoid carrying 100 rupee notes.


We were all set for the trek next day. Permits were needed but that could be managed later. Sadly I could not sleep properly due to the ruckus made by some Indians in the hotel.  

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