Jo Herrings Adventures

This is not the conventional altitude sickness. I haven't lost my appetite, got a thumping headache, disintry or suffer from shortness of breath after 10 steps. This is a feeling of missing all of these symptoms, just to be in the great heights of the Himalayas again. That feeling that none of my pictures from my time in the Kumbu or indeed Sikhm really can medicate me. The thing about travel is it gets under your skin so much it really can leave you with a permanent impediment. The wanderlust of being in the valley of the great mountains 60 years on since the first summit by my heroes Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay is consuming me at the moment. Today is my first anniversary since I made it to Everest Base Cam p, and if today is anything to go by I will be making a return! I will never forget the difficulty of the Kumbu. With nothing more than 5 months travelling South East Asia as training and the first night providing me with a bout of the runs, I was not best...

Nepal offered me respite from the heat and people of the intensity only found in India. For this I am grateful and humbled. Politics Jovial Police during a Bandh I arrived in Kathmandu in the middle of a strike (Bandh). The country is currently in the throes of designing its constitution with a tumultuous government with Maosts, Nepali Congress Party and Communists all unable to gain a majority to rule the country since the fall of the monarch in 2002 when the young prince killed all members of his family and then took his own life. My first impression of the capital was of a march of people blocking the roads and not letting our tourist bus through. Most people had got off the bus by this stage so I was with only a few other tourists (mostly Indians), I poked my head out the window after some time (its was 8am, I had not slept on the 16 hour bus trip so again not my best hour!) with my camera in hand. People started to move around the bus and they ushered us on...

I have always wanted to go to Everest Base Camp to see what the closest to the top of the world must be like. My big sister Fiona made it there some 14 years ago on her way to London. She had run into Ants (her old school friend and now my brother-in-law) in the streets of Kathmandu and later met Simon (her husband) after her trek in Chitwan National Park. She had also bought a painting of the beautiful Ama Dablam  (mother mountain for Mum) with Tengboche Monastery in the foreground and it sits pride of place in our family lounge. As a result Nepal and the Everest region screams family adventure to me.     After a couple of days in Kathmandu during a strike (the country is in massive flux as it does not have a constitution or a governing majority) I met Dustin and Elan near my hostel telling them I was keen to do the Everest Base Camp trek. I had been recommended the Anapurna circuit time and time again but with recent deaths due to slips and the coming m...