Our last trek - thank God was much shorter than the others - led a group of climbers and all ( !!! ) porters to the base camp under the second highest mountain in the world - K2. Our base camp is at an elevation of 5,200 m. Everyone is extremely happy that the first part of the expedition is behind us. The weather is beautiful and Qgir ( K2 ) is an impressive pyramid like mountain. We raised our tents including cooking and eating tent. There are already Korean, German ( they are international expedition ), and Spanish camps standing over our camp. The elevation is effecting everyone here. Josef Simunek is heaving a headache and the reporter of expedition has swollen face. It should be noted that these issues are disappearing quite fast. Another member Petr Masek, who until now climbed only in the Alps, created his personal elevation record just by getting to the base camp. We all congratulate him. With every step, from now on, he will push his personal elevation record higher and higher. Our leader checked the mountain and decided - if the weather will last - we will get on the mountain face already on Sunday. For our festive dinner today, we had a classic Czech dish: pork meat, cabbage and dumplings.

Till four in the afternoon Sirdar Sultan and two to help him, were paying the salary to the porters. But before they even started, Sona and Bouda checked that all of our stuff is there. This is a very important moment, which demands to be detailed and focused. Our experiences from Nepal are telling us that a paid porter is never satisfied, and so he starts to look carefully around. Many of the things he just brought up with such an effort could be on the contrary very useful down where he is heading. So, Sona and Simon were watching the bags which were arriving on the backs of the porters. Zdenek Hruby was sitting on the top of a backpack belonging to the climbers. Zdenek Jaros was pretending to prepare place for a tent having eloquently placed a shovel in his hands. Peter Masek was sitting on the stone between camp and the path going back to the valley. He thanked them for their services and said his goodbyes to each porter with a big smile, while checking each of them for anything having “made in The Czech Republic” written on it. We felt embarrassed about this, but here on the mountain where the toilet paper, soup, or climbing gear is very important and not easily replaceable, it is less important to be polite and more important to be prudent. Expedition member Mira Caban did not have any problems with this, because he was in the tent having suffering with scorching heat.

The Festive dinner for eight exhausted Czechs under K2 was beautiful and well deserved. Bouda became our hero when he reached into the plastic barrel and pulled out 1.5 kg of smoked pork meat and pushed it in to the chef’s hands. In half an hour we were feasting and our chef came to watch us. Everything was great. We did not have a forks, so Sona asked for them. All of a sudden Peter started to say something in Urdu mixed with English and behaving very awkwardly. We had no idea what was going on. It is not good to make the chef angry right in the beginning. Everything was explained moments later. Peter understood we are asking him if he ate pork. It is not good idea to tell Allah’s believer that he ate pork.