Ultimate Packing List For Everest Base Camp Trek

After much deliberation, we’ve finally decided on the below list of items to pack for a 2 weeks EBC trek.

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Our packing list for EBC trek

Clothes

  • 2 dri fit short sleeved shirts
  • 2 long sleeved thermal tops (1 for sleeping)
  • 2 thermal pants (1 for sleeping)
  • 2 trekking pants (honestly 1 would be enough, depends on your comfort level)
  • 2 sports bras (for woman, or guys with boobs)
  • Undergarment (disposables)
  • Fleece jacket
  • Down jacket
  • Outer waterproof windbreaker
  • 2 pairs of regular long socks (for daily trekking)
  • 1 pair of thicker long socks (for sleeping)

 

Accessories

  • Warm hat
  • Beanie
  • Sun cap
  • Head buff (recommend to bring 2 cos it’ll get really really dusty and you might wanna change them!)
  • Sunglasses with UV rays protection (don’t wana burn your eyeballs as you get 5000m closer to the sun)
  • Waterproof thick gloves

 

Electronic Gadgets

  • Mobile phone
  • Phone charger
  • Portable battery (We brought the slim lightweight 5,000mAh portable battery. Should have brought a larger capacity battery instead, well because electricity up there is charged per charge)
  • Camera + extra batteries (Batteries life shorten in the cold)
  • Tripod (Optional)

 

Toiletries

  • *Bring minimal as you will only get to shower once or twice throughout the entire trek!*
    Shampoo
  • Dry shampoo (More suitable for those with oilier scalp. I didn’t use it in the end)
  • Body soap
  • Sunblock (ideally spray type, minimally SPF 50 and above)
  • Facial wash
  • Moisturiser (Both for face & body. Your skin gets really dry in the Himalayas)
  • Tooth paste
  • Tooth brush
  • Foot powder
  • Small microfibre towel
  • Lunette cup
  • Lip balm (best with SPF protection)

 

Gear

  • -20 degree celcius sleeping bag (provided by the agency)
  • Sleeping bag liner (optional, if you feel uncomfortable using the communal sleeping bag. We used the liner for the first 3 days only. After that we gave up on using it, too troublesome. Also cos we were already filthy, so…doesn’t make a difference sleeping in the sleeping bag directly)
  • Trekking shoes (ideally high/mid cut and waterproof as there are quite a few river crossing)
  • Trekking poles (bought ours from Thamel street in Kathmandu for $8.50/pair)
  • Headlight (more for navigating around at night in your teahouse or if you’re heading out to admire the starry night)
  • Swiss Army Knife (for any other emergencies!)

Miscellaneous

  • Passport
  • Thermal flask (super useful especially at sub zero temperatures at higher altitudes! We usually like drinking hot water at night before we sleep and first thing in the morning, keep our insides warm!)
  • Slippers (useful for walking around the tea houses and to the toilet. Nice to give your feet a break from the trekking shoes)
  • Medication (Ibuprofen/Panadol, flu, diarrohea, nauseous pills, Diamox (altitude sickness), lozenges, handiplast, and other usual medication that you take)
  • Water purification tablets (our agency were pro-environment and preferred us to not use plastic bottles)
    Playing cards
  • Toilet paper! (Most of the teahouses that we stayed at had no toilet paper)
  • Hand sanitiser
  • Snacks and chocs! (vacuum packed bakkwa, fun sized snicker bars, assortment of nuts worked for us!)

Things that we did not pack but wished we did:

Large portable battery – You can still charge your gadgets at the tea houses but it gets more expensive as you ascend higher! Average cost around $3-5 per full battery charge. Would recommend at least 10,000 to 20,000 mAh size batteries!

Sun cap – I thought that a warm hat and a beanie were already too much, hence omitting the sun cap from my bag. Thankfully Rachel had a spare to lend me! You will definitely need this while trekking during the day time, the skies are almost void of clouds in Nepal and you don’t wanna end up getting burnt like a yak!

Sufficient sunblock (preferably spray type) – I did bring sunblock, but only those travel sized sunblock. Ideally to bring the spray type of sunblock as your hands will start to get really filthy after 2 weeks of not showering. Dislike the idea of using our dirty hands to apply sunblock all over our face, but oh well. You can still buy at Namche Bazaar if you forgot!

National flag! We were really sad that we totally forgot about bringing our beloved Singapore flag up to EBC 🙁 Tried finding it there but to no avail. We didn’t see any flags being planted at EBC since it’s not a peak or whatever. But it would be nice to stick up our flag with a message on it at the teahouse that we stayed at before heading to EBC.

Permanent marker – To simply leave a message on random places? (etc. our flag…)

Listerine mouth wash – As you go higher, it starts to get too cold to even wash your face or brush your teeth! We actually didn’t brush our teeth for 2 days when we were at EBC. The water was all frozen and it was just too cold and troublesome to get water from the kitchen staff. So, mouth wash would be great in this kinda situation!

Did we miss out anything? Do share with us in the comments below!