OK folks, this is a rant, but it's only out of extreme love for the people of Nepal that I make this point: bottled water is becoming an ecological disaster in the Everest and Annapurna regions.

One of the climbers on this site claimed to be drinking bottled water on the trek to Base Camp. It's not his fault for being uninformed, but I do blame IMG or whoever's permit he's climbing on. They should educate their clients about the bottled water situation in the Khumbu. Sure...it's safe, convenient, and contributes to the local economy, but all those gazillion plastic bottles are piling up and Nepal doesn't have the resources to recycle them again, even if porters start packing them out.

Folks should be prepared to purify their own drinking water with iodine or chlorine tablets. (Vitamin C crystals will help mask the taste.) Tea water is safe because heat kills the bugs, so drinking lots of tea is a good trade-off. However, having the lodges fill your bottle with boiling water all the time isn't cool either, because their heat sources are extremely limited. (Usually they provide one liter of boiled water for you to take to bed at night, which becomes drinking water for the next day. But that's only a fraction of the gallon that's needed daily for hydrating properly.) The Khumbu forests have been decimated for firewood, and kerosene has to be portered in. Yak dung is often the only fuel at higher elevations, and it is time consuming to gather and dry.

A good solution is to use one of those water bottles that filter as you drink. I used the Katadyn Exstream bottle ($50) last year on my trek and it was fabulous! You can fill it anywhere and have instant drinking water--with no chemical taste. I never had any G.I. problems on the trek at all.

So...please forgive the rant, but being a responsible trekker is good for your karma and helps to keep the Himalayas clean and sustainable. ~End of rant~