We sat on the ground outside the Kathmandu airport, duffle bags full of mountaineering gear strewn around us, eating peanut butter from the jar with our fingers and laughing hysterically as Talia read a gossipy email from a friend. My laughter quickly turned into the hacking bronchial cough I had been carrying for a week, but even that couldn’t quell our mirth. We caught our breath and considered our options…

Eight days earlier we sat at this same airport, waiting for our long-delayed flight to Lukla. Four of us were off to hike to Everest Base Camp and summit the 6000m Island Peak. The social dynamics were going to be interesting. Talia and I had met only once before. She had convinced her friend Bobby, a former hiking guide and mountaineer, to join her hiking in Nepal. He wanted to bring his new girlfriend, Glenna, and Glenna wanted to bring me. Oh and Bobby had tried to set me up with Talia’s ex-boyfriend while she was away. But we were all keen on adventure and came to Nepal to find one.

Our flight to Lukla never went. But thanks to Bobby’s contacts we caught a helicopter up instead. Glimpses of mountains between the heavy clouds spurned our excitement. Finally out of Kathmandu, we quickly settled into the rhythm of the trail and each other.

A couple days in, Glenna developed a cold. I soon followed. Bobby had warned us about the Khumbu cough, but we remained optimistic. I was coming off a trying month, and figured I was due for a small cold.

After days of walking through clouds, the mountains appeared. Our spirits lifted, despite the flagging health of half our team, as we walked in the shadow of Ama Dablam. We made Dingboche, a town halfway up the valley, where we paused for a day of acclimatisation.

That night Glenna broke our ‘no meat’ rule. She heartily regretted this waking up on the bathroom floor after a night of food poisoning. The rest of us fared better, though Talia woke with a wet sleeping bag after her water bottle leaked, and I woke up with what was definitely bronchitis. Bobby woke only with the guilt of falling asleep before bringing Glenna needed extra toilet paper. The food poisoning had one positive outcome—Glenna’s cold was completely cured. Turns out expelling everything from your body is a great (if extreme) full body reset.

Despite the rest day, the next day of hiking was the most miserable I’ve had. Coughing, off-balance, weak—I was barely able to drag myself along the easy, graded track. We stopped at a teahouse for lunch…and that was when I made the call to not continue.

I spent the next couple of days in Dingboche sleeping, reading and feeling more than a little sorry for myself. I was feeling slightly better, and getting antsy, when Glenna appeared suddenly. She explained that Bobby was struck down by our same illness and hadn’t made it to Base Camp. Too weak to walk, his travel insurance provided a helicopter down to a nearby village with a medic, and Talia had hiked back for Bobby’s bags. This meant that, for a few hours, the four of us were scattered around the Khumbu Valley with no means of contact.

We reunited and reconsidered our plans to attempt mountaineering on Island Peak. Our group’s current state of poor health, particularly Bobby as our experienced mountaineer, made it an easy call to skip Island Peak and head down together…which Bobby decided should be via helicopter.

Abruptly, we were back in Kathmandu. An ambulance met us on the tarmac, taking Bobby to the hospital while Talia and I found ourselves on that airport floor, surrounded by 10+ heavy bags, eating peanut butter and contemplating next steps.

We found lodgings, and laid in bed til noon the next day, suddenly having no plans and an extra week in Kathmandu. We snacked on fruit and cliff bars, while Talia regaled her mum with our tales of misadventure and planned for her brother’s graduation. When Talia informed her mum, ‘No, I definitely don’t fit in that pink dress anymore; I ate way too much curry in India,’ her mum responded offhandedly, “You’ll just get food poisoning, like always, and lose any extra weight.” An hour later, Talia was on the toilet and spent the next five days barely able to keep any food in. Just like that, the last member of our team went down, cursed by her own mum.

Only half of us made it to Everest Base Camp, and we had to bail Island Peak. But through multiple helicopter rides, illnesses and food poisonings, trips to the hospital and one wet sleeping bag, misadventure bonded us as tightly as any adventure crew could be.

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