Gorak Shep and a Kid at Christmas

OK, odd title I suppose but what can I say?  I do feel like a child at christmas.  When I have the opportunity to add photos to these posts many, if not most, will think I must be suffering from some sort of high altitude psychosis.  Yes, this is a desolate place.  Not much grows at the top of the world.  It is a stark landscape but terrifying and gorgeous.  The mountains are unbelievably massive, sheer rock, blanketed with falling glaciers, and hanging seracs waiting to come crashing down.  The Kumbu glacier next to Goak Shep is covered with debris from the moraine.  It is hiding.  But just as you think it's just a pile of debris left from the retreating Kumbu you spot the ice cliffs scattered along it and hear the snap and crack of it's constant movement.  

Gorak Shep is an odd little outpost of a few seasonal lodges that sits between a small sandy plain at the foot of Kala Pathar on one side and a sheer cliff of loose moraine abutting the Kumbu on the other side.  It is the last stable ground before Base Camp which itself sits atop the Kumbu. 

I have no rational explanation for my euphoria.  All I know is that as I look around me at the terrible beauty of it all I feel such tremendous joy.  I was asked by someone a week before I left for Nepal what I felt about this trip.  Without thinking much I answered with complete honesty.  "I feel like I am going home."  Perhaps that is why I am so happy.