We've planned it for months and now here I am, with daughter Tiffany, and a group of friends. It's just after 3pm on October 3, 2009, and Everest, called the "mother" by Tibetans (Mount Qomolangma) rears up ahead of us.
She is gleaming white and silver, seductive yet somehow forbidding.
We're staying in a "simple Tibetan hostelry" eight kilometres from base camp - a euphemism for a hellhole with wet beds, no running water, a hole in the floor masquerading as a toilet, and a view of the world's most spectacular mountain.
We sit shivering on the roof, knocking back Everest beer and getting beautiful photographs.
The sun begins to set. Everest turns a glowing pink, then a glorious molten golden. There is not a wisp of cloud in the turquoise sky as the sun finally sets.
At 10.30pm, the full moon illuminates the mountain in yet another defining moment as its silver rays play and streak along the ice. This has to be as good as it gets.
The next morning we start to walk up the long gravel road to base camp. The thin air squeezes into our lungs as a solitary munching yak gives us the beady eye.
Finally, we are rescued by the environmental bus, which chugs up and over the rocky outcrops along hairpin bends to the Chinese fortified camp surrounding base camp.
Passports perused, we are allowed to climb a small hill facing the mountain and be challenged by even more awesome views.
Prayer flags flutter in the wind, sending the prayers of the Tibetans for a free Tibet up to their hundreds of gods. We were fortunate to be the last group into Tibet before China closed the borders with Nepal - it is the 60th anniversary of the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet - so there are only half a dozen other tourists. The world is ours.
Amid a cluster of hide tents with smoky interiors where the climbers stay, a mother has put her baby daughter at a tent door to catch the morning sun.
We are shrouded in layers of thick clothes, but light-headed and happy.
Tibet, land of mystery, mystique, legend and fable, is still shrouded in ancient, anachronistic ways, a starkly beautiful, yet inhospitable landscape, with some of the friendliest people.
They are dirt poor, subsistence farmers trying to eke out a living from permafrost and stone-hard ground which, when the rains come, yields soft brown rich soil and bounteous crops.
The gods are everywhere - in trees, flowers, crops, animals, humans, earth, heaven, wells, springs, rivers, mountains, rooftops - gods that must be propitiated at all times.
The one under your armpit is the masculine god, under your left the feminine god. The house god lives in the four corners of your roof, the storage god in your cupboards, and don't forget the god in your well, your stable, and in your kitchen.
Keep your stove clean whatever you do, because if you offend the stove god she might make your whole family sick. Then you will have to ask the resident village shaman to intercede with the gods, placate them, offer them gifts and libations and plead with them.
The monks are disappearing fast from the great monasteries - "relocated" - which have now become museums.
Priceless images of the Buddha, one 26m high, still protect and bring honour to the monasteries, and the burning yak butter lamps are still fed and kept burning by streams of devotees pouring into these sacred spaces, but the chanting, singing, praying and bead-telling of the monks is hardly any more.
A few monks tend to the statues, but the prayer stools are vacant, and forlorn piles of orange and saffron robes are heaped disconsolately all over.
Our journey started in the capital Lhasa, where thousands of pilgrims from all over Tibet - sometimes taking years on the journey - come to visit the holiest shrine, the Jokang Temple, home of a statue of Buddha said to have been made in his lifetime.
Down on your knees, prostrate flat on the stones with your hands stretched in front of you, up on your knees, stand upright, and then begin the whole process over again.
Many pilgrims are wrapped in leather aprons and wear kneeguards with tyres around their bodies to protect them on their long spiritual journey.
Old people circumambulate the temple, spinning their prayer wheels, praying for redemption and a better future life.
The women wear long, drab dresses, with brightly coloured hand-woven aprons of yak wool to show their married status.
Many look impossibly old, with weather-beaten, lined faces that have been exposed since they were born to some of the harshest weather in the world.
Armed riot police patrol the square in front of the temple - a chilling contrast to the peaceful pilgrims.
My two friends, Molly and Khanyi, cause a sensation in the square. It appears nobody there has ever seen a black person.
The marching soldiers in full riot gear lose their step, a sniper nearly falls off the rooftop overhang, and children gape in amazement.
From Lhasa we have climbed in a not-too-rickety bus over precipitous passes and along hairpin bends that would frustrate a mountain goat.
Up, up, up, with a stop for a picnic at Yamdrok Tso, the Scorpion Lake, which is impossibly blue. The stony banks are dotted with tiny wild flowers. We topple out of our bus at the first high pass - Ghatsola - 5 210m and are now in Everest province.
We rush to take pictures of our first view of Everest, little knowing of the marvellous opportunities ahead of us at base camp.
After Everest, from Tibet, we descend from the Tibetan plateau to the wondrous green, mist-wreathed gorges of Nepal, where the jungle thrusts and pushes its way up and down mountains.
There are fast-flowing brown rivers, towering banks of forest, bamboo, tall trees, flowering vines, ferns, lush and green after the harsh Tibetan landscape of the magnificent Himalayas.
We queue for hours in a line of dozens of trucks at the border town of Zhangmu, between Tibet and Nepal. A truck, ablaze with flags, ribbons, motifs, prayers, slogans, and dozens of people, thunders past us with "South Africa 2010" painted in bright colours on its side.
The next day we totter across a perilous steel suspension bridge spanning a 160m gorge. My tent is a couple of metres below the bridge and I watch it swinging to and fro all night in the moonlight as little critters rustle around the tent and an owl calls.
That night at supper I look down at my feet to see a pool of blood on the ground. Leeches! My pragmatic doctor friend Marjorie, from Cape Town, points out that blood-letting is good for swollen ankles.
The next day, Cynthia, our bravest friend, bungee-jumps in the 160m tropical gorge with the Bhote Kosi, one of Nepal's wildest rivers, raging below.
That afternoon, 10 of us go white-water rafting on that wild river - 12km of continuous number four rapids. Our raft dodges huge boulders, hurtles past great jutting cliffs, veers, bounces and careers along and over surging rapids ... but we make it, adrenalin depleted, and soaked and chilled to the skin.
Back in Khatmandu, we visit the medieval world heritage site of Bhaktapur, a conch-shaped medieval city, founded in the 12th century which spreads over almost seven kilometres.
Carved wooden buildings, elegant ancient temples, a dignified palace and graceful monasteries cluster round open public places and are connected by quaint streets, narrow alleys, and three main squares.
We buy carvings, hand-made paper, jewellery of turquoise and mountain coral, silk and wool pashminas, Tibetan singing bowls, amulets, charms, bright hand-woven fabrics and hand-knitted hats and gloves.
In the heart of Khatmandu, we watch from the steps of the high tower in the middle of the ancient Durbar Square square.
On one side speakers are being set up to broadcast Bollywood-type pop music. On another, long lines of pilgrims are queueing to enter a temple and be blessed by the Living Goddess, a three-year-old girl who will keep the title until puberty. Then the next chosen one will replace her.
Perhaps this thought-provoking, almost unbelievable sight sums up the mystery, magic, unpredictability, anachronistic ways and modern trends that characterise both Tibet and Nepal - two of the world's loveliest countries, and among its most inaccessible.
Like Puck, I've travelled many times. But this may have been my most memorable trip.
