Wednesday 22 April 2009

On mountain updates

Day 5
Yesterday a group of 12 of us 'coached' children cricket at Khumjung school. 'Coached' is a loose term as so many of the children were too young for specific skills training, so that gave way to fun games. To see the joy in their faces was uplifting and as the school was at the bottom of an 'indiana jones' type set of stone steps, it felt like cricket was on some sort of frontier journey. Selecting the 12 people from 50 was a tough task and ultimately we went for those whose behavior still resembled that of who we were visiting - it was a wise choice! At the end we presented a full bag of cricket kit to the school.

Days 1 - 3
The third day in and the first chance to write. Two hours sleep in three days as we went from London to our first trek night meant that I really felt the pace on day 1 when I thought I may be suffering from altitude, fortunately it was only sleep deprivation, but after 18 months planning it is only today on day 3 of the trek I feel relaxed and that we are actually here. My biggest thrill so far was the professionalism of the medical team, I spent a lot of effort recruiting them and to see them not only deliver the goods but gain the trust of the team has been so rewarding. On a personal note I have managed to get lots of stunning film footage with easily the biggest challenge persuading enthusiastic people to ignore the camera!