by Evie

If you want to go to Gokyo, then you have to go upwards most of the way and downwards most of the way back. There is not very much flat land in the Khumbu region (the region Mount Everest is in).

It is extremely beautiful once you get to Gokyo. There are lots of flowers of interesting colours. They are called “alpine flowers”. There are three lakes on the way and you can go to the fourth one or the fifth one without having to camp, whereas if you want to go the sixth lake, you have to camp because you cannot get back to Gokyo in one day.

The lakes are emerald green. They are surrounded by mountains. It snowed when we arrived and on the day when we climbed Gokyo Ri.

Gokyo Ri is a mountain that is quite hard to climb, in fact there were some grown-ups climbing it who gave up but we got to the top. It gets cloudy during the day so if you want to climb Gokyo Ri, you have to leave very early. We got up at 5 o’clock!

I didn’t want to leave Gokyo because it was beautiful, even though I did get an altitude headache.

On the way down, it is much easier. It took ten days to get there and nine days to get back because we took a detour round Pangboche and Tengboche. You cannot go too far in a day on the way up because you might get an altitude headache like I did at Gokyo. Mummy got it much more than me and my sisters didn’t get it at all.