Day 11 Base Camp is reached!

Woke up in the grotty lodge feeling a bit rough due to the increased altitude. Paul had a headache and we both felt lack of energy but we decided to press on as we were one days walk from base camp, and we had no desire to remain in that lodge!
We left Loboche at 7am and after a long tough walk we arrived at base camp at 4pm. As we walked in I even felt a bit emotional, it had been a long 8 day journey under difficult conditions and we were absolutely exhausted.
My first impressions of base camp were that it's really big and spread out, in fact it could take an hour to walk from one side to the other, also that's it's really icy and rocky. The prayer flags strung everywhere give it a feel of Glastonbury, and it's dominated by the surrounding peaks and icefall which the climbers have to get through as the first step to climbing Everest.
Our team had set up camp near the icefall and we were impressed by the arrangements, eg a cosy carpeted dining tent with a heater, where we are served delicious meals from the kitchen tent. We met the third climber from our group, Nawal, who had made his way here early. At 62 he is hoping to be the oldest Indian to summit Everest, and he is quite a character! In addition there are 3 climbing Sherpas, one of whom, Tendi, has summited 5 times already.
After dinner we retired to our tent armed with hot water bottles, I was dreading the night as it was snowing and down to minus 12.