T-Minus Nine Days — Where Things Stand Before the Biggest Trip of Our Lives
Before anything else — many of you will have seen the news from Nepal. On 26 August, a glacier collapse triggered catastrophic flooding on the Nepal-China border, with over 900 people confirmed dead and thousands still missing. It’s a devastating tragedy, and our thoughts are with everyone affected, and with the rescue and recovery teams still working in incredibly difficult conditions.
The affected region (Rasuwa/Langtang, north of Kathmandu) is separate from the Everest region we’ll be trekking through, and Evertrek has indicated that nothing from our trip is affected at this stage. But it feels wrong to post a countdown update without acknowledging what’s happened first.
Three of Evertrek’s Nepalese guides are missing after the floods, if you would like to donate to support their families, there is a Go Fund Me page here: Nepal Flooding Appeal
In nine days we leave Auckland. Four months of travel. Canadian Rockies campervan, Eastern Canada, Iceland stopover, a week in Scotland, Everest Base Camp via Gokyo, the Trans Bhutan Trail. Back in to Scotland for Christmas the back to real life in NZ in January.
Writing that out still feels slightly surreal.
Physically
Honestly — tired. Not injured, not broken, just the kind of bone-deep fatigue that comes from being overdue a holiday while simultaneously trying to clear a work desk, manage four months of pre-departure admin, and squeeze in a training walk whenever the weather allows.
The Te Aroha summit hike a few weeks back was the confidence marker we needed. Covering 900m+ of ascent in 2 hours 15 minutes and genuinely feeling the altitude training working — the effort felt controlled in a way it wouldn’t have six months ago — confirmed that the preparation has done what it was supposed to do.
10 weeks at the Auckland Altitude Training Centre simulating over 5,000m (eventually). The Auckland day walks building the leg conditioning. The Kepler Track in April proving the multi-day foundation. The fitness piece is as good as it’s going to get before we land in Kathmandu.
No lingering niggles. No injuries. Everything feels functional and, more importantly, everything feels in control. That’s probably the most important sentence in this update.
Mentally
Excited. Genuinely, straightforwardly excited — not the nervous, slightly-dreading-it version of excited, but the clean kind that comes from having prepared properly and being ready to actually go.
There’s always a low-level travel anxiety that surfaces in the days before a big departure. What if I forget something? What if there are issues with the luggage? What if a flight gets cancelled at a critical moment? These worries are almost always unfounded, they arrive reliably regardless of how well-prepared you are, and they dissolve within approximately six hours of being at the airport.
The months of planning — the EBC training, the altitude sessions, the gear decisions, the booking logistics — have all been pointing toward this moment. It feels less like stepping into the unknown and more like finally starting the thing that’s been on the horizon for eighteen months.
Logistically
The big stuff is done. Flights booked, operators confirmed, insurance sorted, gear packed, permits organised, packing list ticked. The Aloft Thamel is waiting in Kathmandu. Evertrek’s local team knows we’re coming.
What remains is the small stuff. Tidy the garden. Do something with the car. The kind of departure admin that exists on every trip, scaled up for four months rather than two weeks.
The packing is in good shape — everything fits within the 15kg Lukla flight limit across duffel and daypack, with the Fjällräven Kaipak 38 and Abisko 35 performing exactly as expected. The Rab Ascent Pro 800 sleeping bags are packed. The Garmin Instinct 3 Solar is charged and ready for 18 days of GPS tracking above 4,000m.
Things That Changed — And How We Dealt With Them
Four months of travel involves a lot of moving parts. Not all of them stay where you put them.
The Westjet flight that became an Iceland adventure
Our original flight from Toronto to Edinburgh was with Westjet. They changed the departure day, which threw our carefully timed Scotland arrival off completely. After exploring options, we switched to Icelandair — and discovered that for roughly the same total cost, we could add a two-night stopover in Reykjavik on the way. The food tour and midnight cruise are now booked. What started as a scheduling headache turned into one of the most anticipated parts of the trip.
The Doha layover that needed fixing
Our flight from Doha to Edinburgh after Bhutan — part of the long journey home via Qatar Airways — had its departure time changed. The knock-on effect would have left us with a 10 hour connection in Doha after an already significant layover in Kathmandu. Not ideal after five weeks of trekking. We rearranged to a 3-hour layover in Kathmandu and an 18-hour layover in Doha — long enough to book an airport hotel, get a proper sleep, and arrive in Edinburgh feeling human rather than destroyed.
The train that couldn’t take our luggage
The original plan for Eastern Canada was trains between cities — scenic, straightforward, quintessentially Canadian. Then we discovered our suitcases are marginally too large for the baggage restrictions on Canadian rail. Rather than risk it, we’ve switched to hire cars between Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. It works out at roughly the same cost, gives us more flexibility, and adds a road trip element to the eastern section. Problem solved, with minimal drama.
The Lukla flights — still waiting
We’re now 7 weeks out from the EBC trek start date and still haven’t received confirmation of the internal Lukla flights. Evertrek indicated we should hear at roughly the 90-day mark — others from the trip have followed up and it’s all in hand. This is the one outstanding logistics question that is in the back of my head. Everything else is confirmed.
What’s Next
There are a few more posts scheduled to land before the first ‘on-the-road’ article drops from somewhere on the Canadian Rockies road trip — most likely from a campsite with better WiFi than expected and more wine than planned. If you want more real-time updates follow us over on Facebook or Instagram.
Also, check out Elaines website that is now up and running. She’ll be posting much more articulate content than you’ll find here: elainedillonwriter.com
The EBC trek starts 26 October. From that point, I’m not sure about the cadence of posts — I’ll be too far above Namche to do anything about the internet. But we’ll have a full trek diary ready to publish when we’re back in Kathmandu in November.
If you’ve been following the site since the early articles — thank you. Building this from scratch in the months before departure has been one of the more satisfying things I’ve done alongside the actual preparation. It turns out writing about something you’re genuinely doing and excited about is easier than making it up.
See you on the other side of the mountain. 🏔️
The Full Reading List — Before You Go
If you’re planning your own EBC trip and you’ve arrived here just before we leave, everything you need is already on the site:
- EBC Trek Guide for Non-Mountaineers — start here
- Everest Base Camp Cost — the real numbers
- How to Train for EBC — what we did
- Evertrek Review — our operator, honestly assessed
- Trek Comparison Tool — Gokyo, Classic EBC, Bhutan side by side
Andrew Dillon departs Auckland on 12 September 2026 for Canada, Iceland, Scotland, Nepal, and Bhutan. Follow the journey at abovethecloudtreks.com or look for us on Facebook & Instagram.
