Gotta say, this was an absolutely brilliant trip!
The group, 14 of us in all, was a very eclectic mix with Canadians, Icelandic, Dutch, Irish, a couple of very entertaining "Cor Blimey" guys, and the rest of us were Northerners, but fortunately none of the others seemed to hold that against us!
Me and the 2 Cor Blimeys were mates who had embarked upon this jaunt in virtually complete ignorance of quite what was in store for us, so we thought our preparations of a couple of leisurely jaunts up Snowdon followed by a couple of pints of Guinness in the same PYG pub frequented by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 65 years earlier would stand us in good stead.
I confess that the complete ignorance I referred to above was mainly down to me not having read any of the reviews, but to be honest, I am glad I didn't read them because it would probably have put me off going and I would have missed a truly great experience.
The other 11 people were all seasoned trekkers, who were rather surprised by our inexperience (and stupidity?) in embarking upon this full-on 18 consecutive days High Passes Trek which is widely regarded as one of the toughest available.
However, despite me picking up a dose of food poisoning in the UK even before we flew to Delhi, we ALL made it across ALL of the High Passes, due in no small part to the expertise and skill of the Trek Leader, Pasang Lama, who I have to say was brilliant at coaxing, encouraging and looking after us - not surprising really, given his 21 years' experience in the role!
The scenery of course is second to none, and on a few practical points, supplies like toilet paper, snacks, drinks, sun cream etc. are readily available throughout the trek, plus the food available in the Tea Houses was far better than I had anticipated, which is more than can be said for the general standard of ablutions, but hey, even they were manageable.
I am 70, but reasonably fit I suppose, so my advice would simply be get fit, shed a few spare pounds, do a bit of aerobic exercise like jogging or riding a bike, make sure your boots are comfortable and go for it!
The Altitude thing is a bit of a lottery so no point in worrying about it, although it may be prudent to have a try-out at altitude somewhere before you go to see if you may be susceptible to it? Some of us took Diamox, some didn't, but nobody had any significant symptoms of AMS apart from the odd headache, a bit of nausea, and a little bit of water retention.
Loss of appetite is quite common at altitude, and the only thing which bothered me was the inability to sleep when we were above 5,000m - which we were for 10 days in a row - so actually quite debilitating!
