With delight and some envy, I peered into the faces of my fellow travelers, trying to guess who is an ordinary trekker and who is going to conquer the highest peak in the world - Everest, Chomolungma, or as the locals called it - the Mother of the Mountains, Sagarmatha. Since childhood, I myself dreamed of visiting high mountains, among snow-capped peaks, but it seemed to me something unrealistic, the lot of special people.

We spent the night in a loggia - something similar to a hostel. Ate right there, in a common dining room. For the sake of acclimatization, we climbed a little to the local Buddhist monastery and...