ABC. We Actually Made It.

Episode 6: The fog hid the peaks. But the arrival still counted.

Dec 30, 2025

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The morning we left for base camp, Deurali gave us a gift.

We woke at 5:30 a.m. after a night in what we’d been calling the Greyhound Bus - a room so thick with old cigarette smoke you could taste it. Five of us slept shoulder to shoulder, and somehow, we’d slept well.

The moment we stepped outside, none of it mattered. Mountains in every direction, sharp and close, the sky a clean blue. It felt like the trail was inviting us to continue.

Breakfast was quick. We had one job today: reach Annapurna Base Camp.

The trail started rocky, winding past small streams and a few scattered trees clinging to the slope. It was a straight climb from 3,200 to 4,130 meters with no downhill to break it up. My body, weirdly, felt the best it had all week. Maybe it was the views - snow-dusted peaks pulling us forward, making us forget we were working.

At one point, Binod stopped and pointed across the valley at a hillside. The rock had formed into the shape of a seated Buddha, carved by nothing but weather and time. We stood there longer than necessary, staring. After five days of climbing, even the ordinary things look like signs.

Higher up, the landscape thinned out. The trees disappeared. Grass turned yellow-green, and nothing grew past our knees. Fog rolled in and out, and for a while it felt more like the Scottish Highlands than the Himalayas. The air was getting to us now. My chest worked harder with each step, every breath a little thinner than the last.

Rey was struggling. He’d been fighting a cold since the day before, and the thin air made everything worse. We stopped more than planned, checking in, adjusting our pace. No one said it out loud, but we were worried.

We’d planned to push straight to ABC, but Ratna called for a stop at Machhapuchhre Base Camp for lunch instead. It turned out to be the right decision.

The sun was generous. Someone at the tea house handed Ingmar a guitar. He strummed a few chords, and one of the staff joined in with a local folk song. Mandarin pop mixed with Nepali melody. None of us fully understood each other’s music, but we clapped along anyway, full of food and warmth and the feeling that we were close.

Then the weather turned.

One moment we were sitting in the sun. The next, the sky went gray and fog rolled through so thick we couldn’t see the tea house we’d just walked out of. It happened that fast. We went back inside and waited.

Ratna looked unbothered. “Mountains,” he said, like that explained everything.

When the fog lifted enough to see a few steps ahead, we pushed on. The air felt even thinner now. I put on a mask to warm my breath. The guides got extra cheerful - strategic, I think - singing and joking to keep our spirits up for the final stretch.

Two hours of climbing on slippery rocks in the fog later, someone spotted a sign in the distance.

As we got closer, the words came into focus: Welcome to Annapurna Base Camp (4130m).

Behind it, there was nothing. Just white. Fog so thick we couldn’t see a single peak.

No one spoke for a second. Then someone laughed, and then we all did. Five days of climbing, and Annapurna had decided not to show up.

We posed for photos anyway, fighting for space with a loud group of young hikers we’d been dodging since Deurali - the same ones who played some explosive card game every night at maximum volume. Joya shushed them at one point. They either didn’t hear or pretended not to.

But still. We were here.

This was the first base camp I’d ever reached. It didn’t feel real. More like watching myself from slightly outside my own body. We actually made it?

The lodge was a short walk from the sign. Compared to the Greyhound Bus, it felt like a palace. We dropped our bags and gathered in the dining hall, still not quite believing we’d made it.

That’s when 小龜 revealed what he’d been hiding.

He unzipped a pouch and pulled out packets of specialty coffee - hand-roasted, single-origin, carried all the way from Taiwan. He’d protected them in his pack for five days, waiting for this moment. He asked each of us to pick a packet. Then he set up his pour-over kit, boiled water, and brewed each cup by hand. He’d even brought his own cups.

No one said much. We just held the warmth between our palms and savored what he had carried all this way to share.

Ingmar had been saving something too. Since Day 1, he’d been carrying a pineapple cake - a gift from Lea, wrapped carefully in his pack. Every day he thought about eating it, and every day he told himself Not yet. Not until the summit.

Today, he unwrapped it.

He bit into it slowly and smiled. Watching him felt like witnessing a private ceremony, but he didn’t seem to mind.

After the coffee and cake, we wandered outside. The fog had turned the world into a snow globe - white ground, white sky, no horizon at all. Ingmar, Victor, and I climbed a small hill near the edge of camp. A husky appeared from nowhere, hunting for something in the rocks. We followed it around like we were shooting a nature documentary.

By the time we got back to the lodge, dinner was ready. Ratna made us each drink a bowl of garlic soup - for the cold and thin air, he said. It tasted like someone had crushed an entire bulb of garlic and dared us to finish. We drank it anyway.

Back in the room, Ingmar clicked on his little yellow lamp. The walls glowed warmer. We lay in our sleeping bags, not ready to sleep yet.

Someone made a joke about dreading the middle-of-the-night bathroom run, and that opened the floodgates. Bowel movements had become the unofficial theme of the trip. With squat toilets, freezing temperatures, and toilet paper that had to be rationed and protected, going to the bathroom was basically an Olympic sport. You had to keep your pant legs from touching the floor, hold your waistband from underneath, make sure your shirt didn’t dangle or touch anything, and secure your toilet paper somewhere it wouldn’t roll away mid-business. All while shivering and enduring the smell.

Everyone shared how they’d been coping. My trick was a mantra I’d say to myself every time I walked in: If I can poop here, I can poop anywhere. Then I’d get into position, close my eyes, and pretend I was in a real bathroom.

At some point the laughter died down and no one rushed to fill the silence.

We talked about the group. How lucky we’d been. No one had tried to lead. No one had anything to prove. When someone struggled, we slowed down. When someone needed space, we gave it. There was no drama, no ego, no one keeping score.

Someone said it out loud: this group worked. Not because we were the same, but because kindness was the default.

We got lucky. We were a good batch of eggs.

I don’t remember when the talking stopped. The wind pressed against the walls. Sleep came slowly.

Ratna had told us to pray for clear skies in the morning. We still hadn’t seen Annapurna. Somehow, that felt okay.