How a Sherpa guide decides to send you back down the mountain

Records & People With altitude symptoms you sleep no higher tonight. The NHS rules, the signs that mean descend now, and what a guide watches that you cannot see in… By Dawa Sherpa · Sep 23, 2026 Read the full story

A guide who turns a client around on a Himalayan trail is not guessing. The decision runs on a short, fixed set of rules that the NHS, the Wilderness Medical Society and every experienced Sherpa guide agree on, and the most important of them is the simplest… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

The morning question that decides the day

Every guide we work with asks the same thing before breakfast, and it is not "how do you feel". It is a list. Did you sleep? Did you eat? Any headache, and did it come with the climb or the beer? Nausea? Dizzy standing up? A headache alone after a big day is… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

The three rules a guide will not bend

The NHS list of severe signs is short: confusion, balance problems, hallucinations, shortness of breath, a cough with frothy or bloody spit, bluish skin. Any one of them ends the debate. The descent is not "when it is light"; it is now, because both… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

Why the itinerary is built the way it is

The turnaround rule works because the schedule leaves room for it. On our 14-day Everest Base Camp trek the sleeping altitudes climb from Lukla at 2,860 m to base camp at 5,364 m with rest days at Namche (3,440 m) and Dingboche (4,360 m), so no night is more… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

What a Sherpa guide watches that you cannot

The guide walks behind you on the climbs, and there is a reason. Gait tells him more than words: the client who was striding on day two and is shuffling on day five, the one who stops to "take a photo" every hundred metres, the one who has gone quiet. He… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

The medicine question

The NHS notes that a GP may prescribe preventive medicine before a high-altitude trip; acetazolamide is the usual one, and it helps the body adjust but does not replace slow ascent or excuse ignoring symptoms. Painkillers for the headache are fine. Sleeping… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

Everest Base Camp Trek — 14 Days

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