Himalayan Trek Part 2

Day 4 - Namche Bazar to Dole 16.05

Today we hiked from Namche Bazar to Dole, elevating us to 4200m. We estimated that it would take us about 5 hours. The acclimatization walk from the day before definitely paid off, and we didn’t find it too difficult. Loren, who up to this point had been wondering how anyone in their right mind could enjoy trekking, started to actually enjoy it herself!

Our guide told us that today would be the last day that we would see forests, because they don’t grow at the higher altitudes that we would be climbing to. He also told us that we were very lucky, because the National flower of Nepal – the Rhododendron – is usually finished blooming by this time of year. Everywhere we walked there were Rhododendron trees in full bloom! There were so many different colours and shapes, it was like walking through a garden. We also took special notice of the forests, as this would be the last we’d see of trees for a while. There were mostly pine trees, so the air smelt wonderful and Christmassy.

Our trail took us along the side of some mountains, and the view over the valley was spectacular! One slip and you could end up over the edge and tumbling down the side of the mountain. The river flowing through the valley below seemed so far away, and the villages on the mountains on the other side of the valley looked so tiny.

Even more spectacular were the snow covered peaks that filled the horizon. The clouds were moving very fast, so we had moments of clear sky in front of the mountains. We saw the beautiful Lhotse mountain (8501m) and my personal favourite - Ama Dablam (6802m). Ama Dablam has the most incredible shape, and looks the scariest to climb. Sadly, Mt Everest was still out of view.

Ama Dablam

About half-way through the walk, we met a huge group of Canadians. They were heading to Annapurna – Mt Everest base camp. They were a group of friends who were all interested in trekking. A few of the fitter ones had decided to participate in the Annual Marathon from Annapurna Base Camp to Namche Bazar! They were hoping to complete it in about 6 hours.

An Unfortunate Episode

Unfortunately, one of them was a complete moron, and locked Loren in the toilet. The toilets basically consisted of a hole in the floor of a little hut, and a pile of leaves at the side to sprinkle into the hole when you are finished. The door of this particular hut had a lock on the inside and outside. Loren locked the inside, and some guy with a Canadian accent came up and fiddled with the lock and said ‘it won’t open’, duh! The idiot decided without even asking, that there was no one inside, and put a padlock on the door! Poor Loren was stuck inside the hot and smelly hut, calling for someone to open the door. She managed to loosen some of the screws on the lock, but couldn’t dismantle it, and the door was too solid to break. Artur was chatting with the Canadians, and didn’t notice that Loren was missing. Thankfully, the guide came down looking for her, then went to get the key. It was a hot and very irritated Loren that came out of the hut. She was ready to verbally abuse any and all of the male Canadians that crossed her path.

Before we left, we saw a huge train of yaks. Loren was thrilled with their beautiful long fur, and she reached out to touch one as it passed by. It tried to kick her, but thankfully it missed. After that, she was a little more scared of these creatures and their enormous horns.

We set off again, and made it all the way down a very steep mountain. At the bottom, we decided to have lunch at a little tea house, then continue our journey. The group of Canadians had the same idea, and insisted on talking to us further. Loren was still annoyed at the whole lot of them because of the incident that happened earlier, but they were very friendly and she started to like them.

The Night in Dole

We arrived at Dole by about 1pm, and decided to have a nap. It was freezing in our room, so after the nap, we moved to the main room of the tea house where they had a stove. We had heard that people can get sick in tea houses because of the sudden change in temperature from the cold outside, to the warm stove room. We were lucky though, because we arrived before the stove was turned on, and left after the stove had cooled down, so our bodies heated up and cooled down with the stove.

Our tea house was very busy this evening. The Canadians had come to the same tea house, and there was also a Japanese guy, an American guy and our old friend Elad the Israeli guy. We played cards with Narendra, our guide, and with Elad. Elad taught us the game ‘Shit head’, which he had been taught while travelling in India. It was a very simple game, and quite fun. We also played Remibridge (however you spell that). We had to change the rules though because we didn’t have enough cards for 4 players.

Daughter of the teahouse owner, fascinated by our wind-up torch.

The next morning we got talking with the American guy, who had a very German name, Klaus. He was trekking alone with just a guide and a porter, he had started trekking at 800m and he was planning to summit a 6700m mountain. He used to be a professional mountain biker and has been competing since 1991, but now he just does it for fun. As a result he is very fit, and even though this was his first ever climb, he was planning to go the top of a huge mountain!

Artur was very impressed by Klaus’ gadgets. He had a GPS that tracked his progress, his average speed, height of each climb, length of the whole journey etc. He also had a tiny laptop, which weighed only 0.5kg and was made to withstand high altitude. The laptop seemed like such a great idea for travelling, so Artur was very interested. Apparently you can only get it in America and maybe in France.

Starting mountain climbing from an early age

Day 5 - Dole to Machchermo 17.05

We started fairly late today, but the walk wasn’t a very long one. We were going from Dole (4200m) to Machchermo (4470m). It seemed like a waste to go such a short distance, but Elad told us that he’d been told to stay for two days in Machchermo, to acclimatize, before going any higher. We weren’t staying for two days, so a short trek to get there seemed fair.

The walk only took us 1 hour 40 minutes, which was good as it was cloudy, and there wasn’t much to see on the way. We saw some little wildflowers growing on the ground, but apart from a few scraggly bushes, there wasn’t much flora.

A field of wildflowers that still managed to grow at this altitude

We met Klaus again, and he and Artur chatted about their gadgets some more. Artur played with the GPS, and had a good look at the laptop. We saw the Japanese trekker again, and his guide and porter. Apart from that, our tea house was pretty empty. The Canadians must have gone somewhere else.

The tea house owner had some yaks, and fed them just outside the window. It was pretty cool to watch. One of the yaks stood right outside the kitchen door for most of the day, hoping for some more food. He had big blood-shot eyes and huge horns, so we stayed well away from him.

It started to get dark fairly early, which was frustrating because we were reading in the main room of the tea house. They wouldn’t turn the lights on because it wasn’t quite dark enough for them yet, so we had to read with our headlamps. Eventually they turned on the lights and lit the stove. So everyone was huddled around the stove, with no one talking. Eventually we pulled out our cards and played a few games of Shithead with Narendra. Artur became very frustrated with the game because Loren won every single time! He is still mystified at how she managed to do it, and is thinking she might be good in Las Vegas.

Day 6 - Machchermo to Gokyo 18.05

Today we hiked from Machchermo (4470m) to Gokyo (4800m). It was supposed to take 5 hours, but it only took us 3.5 hours. Narendra told us he thinks we are mountain people and that we were doing extremely well.

The houses that we passed on the way were all made of stones, and some sort of mortar to hold them together. Each property was surrounded by a small wall of stones. The walls were built on either side of the path we were walking on, and they looked a lot like the ones you’d find in an English village!

The sky was fairly clear today, so we had a good view of the enormous snow covered mountains. At one point we were looking at the river in the valley below, and thinking that it looked so tiny and distant. We started heading downhill very slowly and toward a distant waterfall. Eventually we found ourselves walking beside that very same river as it flowed down from the waterfall into the valley below. The water was almost a white colour and it was so beautiful as it flowed over the rocks in the riverbed.

We haven’t mentioned many of the animals we saw on the trek yet. We saw mountain goats, yaks, neks and horses. Neks are the females, yaks are the males, so it’s pretty funny when people try to sell yak cheese, because yaks don’t produce milk. We also saw the Nepali pheasant, which was very colourful, but the female was plain and brown.

Anyway, as we started to approach Gokyo, we saw lots of piles of stones. We were unsure of what they were for. They looked like they could be for ceremonies or maybe some were natural. We asked our guide, and he told us that the locals pile the stones like that just for fun. The sherpas and porters stop for breaks along the way, and sometimes they occupy their time this way.

Another really useful thing people do to stones, is to write the name of the town that you are approaching, how far you have to go, and an arrow in the right direction. We also saw a map drawn onto a stone, for the entire area we were trekking in. Very helpful for getting our bearings.

The rock with a map on it

It started to become very cold as we approached Gokyo, and we saw a few patches of snow nearby. The ground beneath our feet consisted of medium and small sized rocks, making each step important for balance. The landscape was covered with little towers of piled rocks, left behind by sherpas.

The most beautiful to see though were the three lakes. They were so clean and still, and such a beautiful clear blue colour. At the edge of the lakes you could see right through the water to all of the rocks at the bottom. All around us, incredible snow-capped mountains rose up on all sides, some were far off in the distance, but others were incredibly close. It felt like we were on another planet.

Gokyo Village

Finally we approached the little village of Gokyo. It was magical! The houses were clustered in front of a lake and on the opposite side of the water, a huge snow-covered mountain towered into the sky. On another side of the lake, we could see Gokyo Ri, the mountain that was our final destination. We would climb it the following day to reach 5360m.

We stayed at a tea house called Gokyo Resort, and they spoiled us with a spectacular view from our room. We were in the middle room on the top floor, and we could see the village below us, the clear blue lake and the huge mountain on the other side, all framed by our window.

Room with a view

The weather was quite cold at this altitude, so after a quick nap, we escaped to the stove in the dining room. Here we ran into our old pal Klaus, and the Japanese guy, who was a very loud eater by the way, not hard to miss. Klaus had climbed Gokyo Ri that morning, and showed Artur his pictures. Artur was a bit disappointed because it was very cloudy, and there was not much to see. Klaus had gone up the mountain at about 5 or 6 am, so we decided that we’d have to go earlier if we wanted to see Mt Everest.

After dinner, we decided to climb the mountain ridge behind our resort, so we could see the glacier on the other side. We were thrilled because the freezing weather meant we could finally try out our Puff Daddy jackets, and Loren’s new beanie.

At the base of the ridge, we found a big dog who seemed to be using a covered rubbish pit as a shelter. He seemed to like us, and followed us all the way to the top. The climb was steep, but not too hard. The only problem was that Loren had quite a bad headache, which hurt more when we were walking. She thinks it was from dehydration from digestion problems, not altitude sickness, and even if it was altitude sickness, the medication you can take for it causes further dehydration. So it was a no win situation.

Unfortunately by the time we reached the top, the sky was covered in fog, and we couldn’t see further than a metre or two in front of us. Then suddenly, it started to snow! Loren doesn’t see much snow in Australia, so she was very excited. Our dog found shelter from the wind behind a raised piece of rock, but apart from that he didn’t seem too bothered by the snow. We started to get cold though, so all three of us headed down the mountain ridge again. It was extremely steep for us, but the dog just ran straight down so easily. Loren was very jealous of the ease with which dogs can run up and down mountains.

Himalayan Trek Part 1

Day 1 - Lukla to Phakding 13.05

We got up at five in the morning, and ordered some breakfast to be packed for us downstairs in the restaurant. Unfortunately, the guy on the phone didn’t understand us, and no breakfast was packed. Our guide told us not to worry, that we had plenty of time, so we waited while they packed some food for us. We rushed to the airport, but for once the flights were running on time, and we missed our flight. There was nothing to worry about though, we just caught the next flight an hour later.

The Great Flight

The ride on the plane was definitely something to remember! The plane was a tiny propeller plane, and there were only 5 passengers. The rest of the seats were filled with sacks and cargo. There was one air hostess who gave us lollies to suck and cotton-wool balls for our ears. The pilot and co-pilot were fully visible, with not even a curtain separating us from the cockpit. We could see them moving the controls and communicating on their headsets, the whole way through the flight.

Narendra, our guide, told us to sit on the left side of the plane, so we would get a good view of the Himalayas. We got more than a good view, it was incredible! The whole stretch of the Himalayan mountains were just beside us for the whole flight. The were enormous! They towered much higher than we were flying, and they were covered in snow. The mountains beneath us were covered in trees and we could see the tiny little paths made by people for getting between villages. At the base of most of the valleys we passed over, we could see clear blue rivers rushing over rocks.

The best part of the flight though, was the landing. As we approached Lukla, our destination, we could see a big mountain looming up in front of us. Then we saw the runway! It was a tiny white strip on a steep slope. We could see it coming closer and closer through the cockpit window, and then finally we hit the runway, and slowed our speed as the plane pushed uphill.

The Town of Lukla

The Lukla Airport is at an army base, so there were soldiers in blue camouflage uniforms everywhere. Our porter came to meet our guide and walked off ahead on the trail with our backpack. In Lukla, we stopped at a little tea house for a drink. We were surprised by the huge pile of empty beer bottles next to the house. We figured it must have been from people who were finished trekking, because most people aren’t silly enough to add hangovers to the other list of symptoms that you can get from being so high in the mountains.

The Trek Begins

The trek planned for the day was actually quite a short and easy one. We were trekking from Lukla (2800m) to Pakding (2652m). We headed off with great energy and pace. After a while of following our guide, we got sick of his slow pace and headed on further ourselves. The paths are very well marked and at this part of the trail there were lots of other trekkers and porters.

We were thrilled by the views we saw along the way. The first part of the walk reminded Loren of the villages around Dalat, Vietnam. We descended into a valley full of little houses and stretching fields of green. In these villages there are lots of places offering pool tables to play on, lots of souvenirs and trekking clothes.

Further along the walk, there were less houses, and we walked along an enormous valley. The houses on the other side looked so small, almost like leggo houses. The river that ran below us was a beautiful powder blue colour, and it looked so inviting as we walked in the hot sun.

Phakding

Eventually we reached Pakding, and we had the whole afternoon to relax. We were expected to take 2.5 hours to get there, but we did it in 1.5! The tea-house that we stayed in was made of wood, and reminded Loren of a ply-board dollhouse. We chatted with an Israeli guy called Elad, who was trekking by himself. He was still planning to trek to another village before the end of the day. We went straight to bed after lunch, as we’d only had 4 hours sleep the night before.

There wasn’t much to do at the tea house, other than eat, play cards and drink tea, but thankfully there were two other guys staying there who we had fun chatting with. The guys had been on our flight that morning, because they missed their plane too. They didn’t have a guide, but were just going together, and catching up with some other people on the way. They had also been to India, and shared their own horror stories from there too.

Day 2 – Phakding to Namche Bazaar 14.05

The second day of trekking was one of the hardest. Loren was not feeling very well that day, which didn’t help things, and this was our first long day of trekking – 5 hours. We were travelling from Pakding (2652m) to Namche Bazaar (3400m). So it was a big climb of 800m vertically! That’s almost 3 times the height of the Eiffel Tower!

Our canine companions

As we left Phakding, we saw a beautiful dog lazing in the sun. Loren waved at him when we were walking past, and he decided to follow us. He trotted along just ahead of us for quite a long way. Eventually we came across another dog who was interested in our dog and started to ‘flirt’ or with him. They both ended up racing through the hillsides playing ‘hide and seek’.

For the first 3 hours of the trek, we didn’t really do any steep climbing. Narendra told us that we’d cross the river on suspended bridges 5 times that day.

The trail climbed each time we got to a bridge and then descended after we’d crossed it, so we just climbed up and down for the first part of the day. The suspended bridges were very cool, they were like Indiana Jones bridges!

On the way, we saw lots of Buddhist symbols. Huge stones are carved with symbols or writing, and then the carved parts are painted white. It looks amazing as the white carvings contrast with the dark coloured rock.
We also saw lots of cylindrical bells which you spin 3 times anti-clockwise, and your sins are supposed to be erased. Every spin rings the bell inside. We saw enormous ones sitting in huts, as well as tiny ones along the path on the way.

We didn’t start to climb that 800m until the very end of the trek for the day. So that meant one solid hour of extreme uphill climbing. Thankfully our guide was walking very slow, which meant we didn’t have to keep stopping to catch our breath, we could handle continuing on the sleep slope. We saw some people walking fast, and then at the next rock, you’d find them sitting and puffing. We felt like we were crawling, but we were actually overtaking everyone we came across.

The porters that we saw along the way were extremely slow, but they were carrying enormous loads. Some of them were carrying doors on their backs or several sleepers of wood. Others were carrying huge baskets piled high with trekker’s big backpacks. Apparently some of these porters carry over 100kg of kerosene at a time, up these slopes. It was hard enough just to carry our tiny backpacks and our own body weight, let alone piles of cargo.

Porters carrying as much or more than the yaks

Namche Bazar

Namche Bazar was like a mini Thamel. There were shops and tea-houses to stay in everywhere. Little stalls were set up on either side of the road, offering jewelry, knitted socks and slippers and all sorts of other knick-knacks. We found lots of internet cafes, but they were all powered by satellite links, so they were literally 10 times more expensive than in Thamel. The houses here looked even more like doll-houses. They all had roofs painted blue or green and they look very similar to each other.

Day 3 – Everest View Hotel 15.05

Namche Bazar from the top

The next day we stayed in Namche Bazar so that we could adjust to the altitude. We had a ‘short walk’ planned for the day, so that we could get used to walking at this altitude. We set off straight after breakfast, which is never a good idea for the stomach. The first part of the walk, which was just to get us out of the village itself, was straight up the mountain side. We were exhausted already by the time we had left the village houses behind. We climbed over a pile of rocks that were set up to help you climb over the barb-wired fence. This is where the walk really began.

Yak carrying supplies

The trail we followed was made of rocks set up like little steps. It was very steep, so we had to climb slowly. Despite our slow ascent, we had to stop every now and then to catch our breath. We could really feel the effect of the altitude on our bodies. The climb seemed so much harder than the one we had done to reach Namche Bazar, even though it was probably not much different other than the altitude. Stopping to take photos was the best excuse for stopping when your heart started to feel like it was going to explode right out of your chest.

After a steep climb, the trail ended, but our walk didn’t. We started hiking across mossy hills littered with rocks. To the eye, the hills didn’t seem as steep as the steps we had just climbed, but our bodies, it felt much worse. The problem with climbing hills is, that every few metres, you think that you can see the top, then suddenly another peak appears. By the time you have reached that peak, even more have appeared in the distance. Eventually a building appeared above us, which was apparently the top of this particular peak. It was a Japanese hotel, that cost USD 200 per night. Quite expensive compared to the other tea houses in Namche Bazar.

Near where we had been walking, we saw a runway, and two helicopters. Apparently, people used to fly to this runway from Kathmandu, but the sudden change in altitude was too much for most people, and they got very sick. So now people can only fly to Lukla, that way they can acclimatize better on the way.

We thought this was the end of the walk, but we still had a fair way to go. Thankfully most of it was fairly flat. We walked along the peak of the mountain and then along a trail cut into the side of another mountain. Finally we saw a flight of stairs leading to a big building. Our guide told us that this was the Everest View Hotel. On clear days you have a spectacular view of the tallest mountains in the Himalayas, including Everest! Unfortunately this was not one of those days. There was nothing to see except huge billowy clouds.

We decided to wait and hope for the best, maybe the clouds would clear. So we collapsed on a couch and warmed ourselves with some hot tea. We comforted ourselves with the fact that we’d made it from 3400m to 3880m in one hour and 20 minutes, without dying. Eventually we gave up, the clouds weren’t going anywhere, so we headed back down the mountain.

The climb down was a lot more fun and we made it in 45 minutes. Our guide was as sure-footed as a mountain goat and he sped down the mountain. We kept up fairly well, but had a few slips on loose rocks on the way. Thankfully, there were no injuries.

We took a quick nap, as was becoming our habit, and recharged our batteries. After recovering, we decided to check out Namche Bazar. We were intrigued by the name and wanted to find where the bazaar was. There was no big market square, instead there were sellers sitting along all of the main roads. They had little tables displaying knitted scarves, socks, hunting knives, figurines, jewelry, badges and other trekking related items.

Loren bought a pair of rainbow coloured knitted socks. They were shaped more like slippers, and they were very thick. They turned out to be one of the best purchases, as she had nothing to wear after hiking each day, other than thongs, and it was too cold to wear those. So the socks became slippers to wear in the teahouses.