You’ll spend roughly two weeks just getting to Everest Base Camp. That’s the trek through the Khumbu Valley—think mountain lodges, yaks, and lots of “Om mani padme hum” chanting. It’s gorgeous, but your legs will hate you.
Then you arrive at Base Camp (17,600 feet). And you wait. You wait for your body to adjust to the thin air. You wait for the weather to behave. You wait for the Sherpas to fix the ladders over the icefall. Waiting is the secret ingredient of Everest climbing.
Acclimatization: Why Your Body is a Drama Queen
Your body hates altitude. It’ll throw a tantrum—headaches, nausea, weird dreams. To trick it, you do something counterintuitive: you climb high, then sleep low. You’ll spend weeks doing “rotations” up to Camp 1 and 2, then back down to Base Camp.
Each rotation takes a few days. By the end, you’ve basically lived in a tent for a month. Your only friends are your sleeping bag and the guy who runs the portable toilet tent. True story.
