(Carried on from Part 1)
Namache Bazar, at 3440 metres is generally seen as the first day of rest to acclimatise to the altitude. It is also the first opportunity to see Everest. A tiny spec in the distance, its beauty is dwarfed by the far more impressive peaks that surround it.
It's so small
In Namache it is your last chance to change cash or travellers cheques, purchase really heavy souvenirs so that you get your monies worth out of your porter and buy more hiking crap that you are paranoid that you think you will need.
I purchased a wooden stick. A very fine stick at 110 ruppees and probably the only time in my life that I will ever purchase a stick. This stick though became my best friend on the journey and helped me through much terrain. I love my stick.
Me and stick
Moving on from Namche my next stop is Dingboche at 4410 metres. Now the symptoms of altitude sickness is extreme headaches, followed by vomiting and then death – a nasty way to go, less you get yourself down to a lower altitude fast. Everyday helicopters fly hikers back to Katmandu because they did not heed the warnings, at $3,000 a pop, this is an expensive mistake to make. For me I did not suffer from altitude sickness, however I did suffer from altitude.
Altitude does weird things to your body and mind. I woke up one night, paranoid that I could not breathe, at this altitude oxygen is running at 57%. I am in some kind of panic attack, I do not know if I am too hot or too cold, my sleeping bag feels like it has become a claustrophobic shell, strangling my body. My mind is saying “You cannot do this – strip off naked and run down the hill towards oxygen”. I need my air.
I tear myself out of my sleeping bag, death trap, and run outside. I focus, breathe, breathe Colin, breathe. I am alive and the panic subsides. I look up to the most perfectly clear sky and wonder at how beautiful it is with the mountains illuminated by a full moon. I then realise it must be -10 degrees out here, it is bloody freezing and I have the urge to return back to my snuggly warm, life giving, sleeping bag . Thank god I did not strip off naked and run down the mountain in a futile search for oxygen. Being naked in -10 degrees is not a good idea for more than 5 seconds.
Other things that I note is that my tongue feels twice the size and seems to have lost most of its taste. The relatively bland food seems even more relatively bland. Furthermore, mucus seems to be taking over my body like something from 1970s Doctor Who series. Blowing out snot and gobbing up chunks of phlegm are a regular occurrence. Being at altitude is going to be a reasonably disgusting experience I realise.
Click on photos to see full collection of images.
Go to Part 3
3 comments
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November 7, 2008 at 11:28 am
Jez
…eating snooker chalk has surely prepared you in life for eating bland food!!…
November 26, 2008 at 9:15 am
Andy
A thought for the day.
57% oxygen you say. I thought it was roughly 78% Nitrogen, 21% oxygen & 1% all other gases.
You’ll have to convert meters to feet but to give you an idea of what you faced, here goes. A pressurised aircraft reduces its internal pressure as it climbs, it can only reduce to a certain level to sustain life inside its metal shell even though it may fly at an extremely high altitude. The difference between the inside and outside pressures is called the pressure differential and we goes to great levels to ensure this never approaches maximum or else the fuselage would explode.
A fuselage acts like a balloon, only in reverse. If you blow up a baloon at sea level as you increase altitude the pressure around the outside of the balloon will decrease. Because the pressure inside the balloon remains constant the balloon will expand as you go up. If nothing is done the balloon will explode. Therefore we must reduce pressure inside the balloon to deflate, this reduction in pressure is seen as an increase in altitude. On an aircraft decent the principle works in reverse.
In normal flight at say 35000 foot we reduce the internal pressure from sea level to 6500 to happily maintain breathable life. Jet engines are massive air compressors that can take the thin air at altitude and compress to a level that is usable and produce more than the engine requires to to run. We bleed off this hot excess air and use it to de-ice the airframe and pass via air conditioning machines to pass air into the cabin that we all breath. At 35000 the air is -50 ish. If the cabin pressure was to decrease to 8000 foot a automatic cabin high alert system deploys the overhead drop out masks, like in a 70’s epic movie, and people scream. When they pull the mask toward them, on modern jets, this activates a chemical oxygen unit which will produce breathable gas for 5 minutes giving the pilot enough time to get below 10000 foot.
The ICAO, International Civil Aviation Authority, have decided that all humans cannot be relied upon to self sustain life using their lungs alone above an altitude of 10000 foot and hence at 8000 foot within the fuselage introduce a mandatory fail safe.
Think about that next time you’re standing on your head!
November 26, 2008 at 1:35 pm
colinlaidlaw
Thanks Andy for the technical details there. Yes you are correct about oxygen, so I should say 58% of the normal level of oxygen, or something like that. Next time I am on my head I shall ponder these technical details.
Do you know anything about the migration habits of starlings?
col