Hi Everyone,

This will be my penultimate blog, so firstly I would to say thank you to everyone who has followed our expedition, sent messages of good wishes and ultimately made this expedition so successful. I will complete another blog in Kathmandu at the conclusion of our travels.

So what has being going on around Base camp?

Well everyone has been safely back at BC for the past few days now and we are all very keen to leave here and to get back to our family & friends. This unfortunately has been delayed by the lack of transport and the earliest transport we can get is the 24th May 2006, this has caused some frustration, however there is nothing we can do. It is meant to take two days to travel to Kathmandu, but we have arranged to do it in one day so we will leave tomorrow at 5am and arrive very late tomorrow night. Now the only problem is that this could be 5am Beijing time or 5am Nepal time!

Base camp is fast becoming a ghost town as all the expeditions withdraw and go home. We have had lots of visitors from the Indian expedition, Everest Max etc and this really helps to put the day in. However, boredom is setting in and the sooner tomorrow comes the better. Our equipment is on its way down from ABC and will arrive back at BC this afternoon so this will give us something to do, repacking all the kit for the return journey home.

I would like to take this opportunity thank all our supporters and sponsors and if I have forgotten anyone I must apologise, it may be the lack of oxygen affecting my brain?

OK, here goes- Garry Clarke for his excellent work on the website, we have provided the content but Garry has done the work, Fisher Engineering, (Ivan fisher, Wesley Knox), Western Registration (Alan Evans), Airphone Communications ( Mike Foster) provided the radios and satellite equipment, Musgrave Supervalue (Andrew Maxwell) provided all the food to keep the soldiers going (no more Jaffa Cakes, Please), HP ( Caroline Titmuss) HP provided the computers to keep you at home informed of our progress, Breitling and Mercers Jewellers (Jonathan Styles) for the use of a Breitling Emergency, McGrath Brothers, Lisburn, for barrels to transport equipment, Elliott York Partnership, Jenny & Lee for all the admin and dealing with all the Media requests, TNT ( Jakki & Steven McClean) for safe transport of our equipment to and from Nepal, Himalayan Expeditions ( Bikrum Pandley & All the staff) for the Excellent way they have ran our expedition, The Duke of Edinburgh Award for the inspiration to get involved in mountaineering, Bridgedale, suppliers of socks to the expedition, Cascade Designs( Maurice) suppliers of thermarests and cooking equipment, LE Graphics (David) Clothing, Tisos( Scott Shaw, Neill McGuigan) expedition clothing and Equipment, Homechoice Care Ltd (Justin Jewitt) for suppling our high altitude food and the Crawfordsburn Inn through it’s suppliers for expedition food.

Bye for now

Neill