This is it. What months of dreaming and training have led me to.
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At 4032 metres, above our campsite near the village of Pangboche, in the Nepali Himalayas, I gaze across a range of gigantic peaks that include Mount Everest (8848 metres), its smaller neighbour Lhotse (8516 metres) and probably the most gnarled and characterful mountain of all, Ama Dablam (6812 metres).
I'm less than halfway to the top of the world's highest mountain, Sagarmatha, as it is known locally, that Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay were the first to summit, over 70 years ago.
Yet, on this, my first visit to this extraordinary country, this is as high as I am going to go, and, after a distressing bout of altitude sickness, two days ago, I am more than happy to have come this far.
Two out of our World Expeditions (worldexpeditions.com) group have not been so fortunate, one sadly afflicted with debilitating migraines at Namche Bazaar, at around 3500 metres, could go no further, and another, carrying a chesty cough, had to turn back the following day.
Mountains this size are not to be messed with. They have been here, seemingly forever, soaring skyward, communing with clouds and massive enough to produce their own weather systems around them, their snow-clad slopes and ridges glinting this afternoon, in the April sunshine.
Having flown into Lukla, at 2846 metres, descending through mist and cloud and squeezing between the steep sides of a cavernous valley before landing safely at one of the world's shortest and most dangerous airstrips, it has taken us five days of trekking to reach our turnaround point here at Pangboche.
Early days are relatively short, with two to five hours, mostly of climbing, and zig-zagging across blue-grey rivers swelled by melted ice, on multiple suspension bridges. Wobbly and often full of other trekkers, porters and trains of mules carrying bags and goods - the only transport up here, other than helicopters, is of the two or four-legged variety - in this popular spring season, these present the biggest of challenges to one young French Canadian in our group, who is scared of heights. With coaxing, courage and a firm grasp onto the backpack of a fellow trekker in front of her, she makes it across them all.
Our group ranges in age from 28 to the early 50s and the trekking is manageable for all thanks to a deliberately slow pace - the sort of shuffle you imagine oxygen-starved climbers doing near the top of Everest - set by our lead Nepali guide, BB, and regular rests to reset. At nearly 62, I am glad I did plenty of training, though.
Even that doesn't help after our first longer day, reaching the Sherpa capital of the Himalayas, Namche Bazaar. Although the climb along a series of switchbacks goes fine, once in my room at our mountain guest house, after dinner, I find myself struggling to breathe and hence unable to sleep.
For the whole night.
In the morning, I seek out our genial senior guide Bir Singh, a man who safely led a trekking group through the epicentre of Nepal's 2015 earthquake, and we talk through options, including stopping where we are, going back down or continuing via a shorter route later that afternoon. In the end, I am administered Diamox, to treat the altitude sickness, and decide to tough out the day's six-hour trek with the rest of the group.
That morning, with the medication yet to take effect, I trudge uphill toward the Everest View Hotel (a Japanese built oddity with outstanding vistas) like a sleep-deprived zombie. Slowly and surely, basking under radiant blue skies and with the increasingly spectacular vistas, including our first clear sight of that most fabled of all mountains, driving me on, I begin to feel human again.
It is hard to describe the scenery up here without descending into purple prose. It's like nowhere else I have ever been - staggering in scale, size and on this sparkling day, beauty. These peaks are nearly four times as tall as Australia's highest mountain, Kosciuszko.
For once I can employ travel writing cliche in saying that our modest Himalayan trek has been breathtaking, in that, at times, the combination of landscape and altitude has literally had me gasping for air.
It has all been worth it. Standing close to the top of the world, in Nepal, is one of the greatest thrills of a life spent exploring this planet.
