Nepal Everest Base Camp ( Before Departure )

In less than a week time, I will be leaving for Nepal and starts the journey to Everest Base Camp. The group consists of 9 persons including me.

Foung Yee is our lead. She might not want to be label as "leader" as she think everybody is playing a role in this trip. But she did contributes alot from information gathering, route determination, flight booking, insurance to porter/guide hiring.

Hai Poh translated the information from English to Chinese version and prepared booklet for all of us during our last EBC member meeting. Kok Yuen and Peng Meng had trekked Annapurna Base Camp and Annapurna Circuit before. They shared their experience during their previous trip and it's indeed useful for our budget planning. SuiJing helped to prepare the first aid kit. What have I done for the group? Well.....my job starts when then the journey starts . I will be the treasury, record and control the budget....(although I am not good at numbers :p).

We are originated from different hometown, work in different places - Selangor, Mantin, Melaka, Johor and Singapore, but with one objective, all of us will be gathered at KLIA on 3rd Oct and fly off to the capital city of Nepal - Kathmandu.

We will be trekking at the Everest Region, we choose Everest Base Camp Cross Chola-la Gokyo Trek.

Summarization of our trek : Lukla -> Namche Bazaar -> Tengboche -> Dingbuche -> Day trip to Chhukung Valley and back to Dingbuche -> Lobuche -> Gorak Shep -> Kalapathar and back to Gorak Shep -> Everest Base Camp and back to Gorak Shep -> Zongla -> Chola-pass -> Thagna -> Gokyo ->Gokyo Ri and back to camp -> Dole -> Namche Bazaar -> Lukla

The places above sounds unfamiliar to me at the moment but I will know how they looks like very soon.

I was sick for the past few days and I hope I am able to fully recovered before departure. Hopefully I am able to complete the route.

Panorama Hill, Mt. Tapis and Rainbow Waterfall

I went to Sungai Lembing again, a small town located not so far away from Kuantan. There are 3 main tourist attraction here: Panorama Hill (Lembing Hill), Mount Tapis and Rainbow Waterfall. During the National Day holiday last year, I was here to climb Mt Tapis but couldn't make it to the summit. Mandy was injured and we had painful experience of trekking more than 12 hours.

After a year, I was here again for the summit of Mt. Tapis, just to complete the route that I haven't finish last year. Same itinerary but this time more merrier as we had 11 people joining the trip. Early in the morning, before the sun goes up, we trekked up to Panorama Hill. It only took about 40 minutes to reach the top, but the scenery is very nice. Look at the photo above, Mt. Tapis can be seen from far.

We hired a small lorry to take us from Lembing town to the start point of Mt. Tapis trekking. After an hour moving on the bumpy road, we reached the destination. The journey started with crossing the river. Then, we trekked 4 hours to reach camp 2. Just after the tents were setup, rain started to pour. From the first until the last day of the trip, same condition applied. It starts raining after we setup the tents. Everyday we had to cook and had our dinner in the tent.

However, this time timing was accurate and even better than expected. The 2nd day, we use 6 hours to reach summit. The 3rd day, we only spent 8.5 hours to go down from summit and trek to the camp site of rainbow waterfall. It was totally out of our expectation. We had all prepared to walk until the night, but we reached before 6pm.
The next morning, we trekked around 1 hour from the camp site to rainbow waterfall. As its name, we hope to see the rainbow at the waterfall. This is my 2nd time there, the waterfall still beautiful as previously. But this time, the sun was blocked by the clouds. By the time the sun shines, it was quite late and the rainbow is quite low. Look at the picture on right, it was just above the water level.
The photo on left was taken last year. The rainbow is higher.


Overall, the trip was fun. I had made it to summit of Mt. Tapis, but the scenery was not as nice as I thought. Besides complete the route that I missed out last year, it was also the training for October Nepal trip. I think I am still weak because I had muscle pain for few days after back from Mt. Tapis. :(