Expedition Report From Nepal - Entry for 3rd April

Roddy McArthur and Neil Greenwood left Sinchebung Bhanjyang at 5am in the dark to race ahead to our next camp at Phumphedanda some 12 miles away to lay out our solar panels in the sun to charge up our computer batteries. Our trial yesterday of walking with the panels hung on Neil's rucksack was only partially successful and gave us a about a 70% fill, not enough for us all to email and send our daily diary. Today has been very successful and our intrepid pair have achieved a recharge of one and a half batteries.

We have restricted both our teams to sending one email every 3 days. They have 10 minutes each to write their emails so friends and families will find that emails are short. We would ask you all to read on our daily diary for detailed news of how everybody is getting on. Once we reach base camp then we will have more power and so we can send more emails. Both teams are together for another week until 11 April. The Junior Team will then split off to trek to their base camp and will be out of touch for about a week until 17 April or so when they will come up again on line.

Good news this morning as the 4 missing bags arrived from Kathmandu. The porters had travelled fast overnight to catch us up. So 4 people had big smiles on their faces. Our route today took us further into this remote mountain area through steep jungle covered terrain. The path deteriorated into a narrow mountain path that wound through the jungle and across small valleys and rickety bridges (two Logs) across ravines. The ciarcarda filled the air with a background noise similar to a rachet scraping continuously. Lunch was at 10 am on a little field overlooking the Kabeli Khola river some 3000 ft below. We got our first glimpse of a Himalayan giant that just appeared through the heat haze. Jannu towered up into the clouds in the far distance. Our afternoon stroll was across steep terraced fields as we left the jungle behind and moved into an Alpine environment. The heat was unrelenting as we climbed to our overnight stop.

For the kids: Your man today is Neil Greenwood our hero who raced ahead this morning to charge up the computer batteries so we could send this. He is responsible for power on the expedition to run computers, satellite communications and radios. He has 3 children all boys, one aged 5 (Harrison) at school and twins aged 3. He is really enjoying his second visit to the Himalayas and much looks forward to tackling Kangchenjunga. As an engineer he has designed a toilet and shower for base camp, it will be very popular.

Diary entry by David Nicholls.