Okay back now after dinner and breakfast the next day. Pat and I are sort of at a stand still in Kathmandu waiting around to apply for our Russian visa. The embassy is only open for visa service 3 days a week for one hour each day. Not that I am complaining Kathmandu is a cool city to be in. I ended last at a snowball throwing contest, it seemed. In the lower hills our days of walking were more lengthy than our days in the upper hills, reason being the altitude was not a concern. One of the best ways to avoid altitude symptoms is to stay very hydrated which means about 4 liters of water a day, which also means, for me, about 4-5 times a night visiting the outhouse. I think one of our best investments of supplies for this trek was a “pee bottle”. Some may think that sounds odd, but it is just that, a separate Nalgene bottle meant only to pee in at night instead of walking out to the outhouse in the freezing cold temps. Without a “pee bottle” the typical scenario…get out of your nice warm sleeping bag have to put on all of your clothing and winter jacket socks, boots and gloves. One then makes the long walk out of the lodge to the little wooden shack with a hole cut in the floor, the floor often being frozen from the pee that didn’t make it in the hole. You would need to take special care while half a sleep to make sure not to slip into the hole and the “poop pyramid” which most trekkers call it. Then going back into the lodge only to have to repeat it all over again in 2 hours. No thanks! At first Pat and I were sharing a bottle which was a terrible mistake because a one liter bottle was not enough room for the frequency we both had to go. As you can all imagine, I was the one that made the special trip in the night to empty the bottle to ensure Pat did not overflow it the next time he needed to go. I became quite tired of that routine, so when we reached Namche a village I will describe later we bought another one “his and hers”. Anyway both Pat and I agree that was the best investment for this trek.
The food along the way was good and consisted of a lot of carbohydrates including potatoes, rice, carrots, cabbage, rice, oats and eggs were our main source of protein. One Nepalese dish in particular called Dal Baht was good and different depending on who cooked it. It’s a very traditional consisting of vegetables with a mild curry, rice and Dal which is like a soup made of smashed lentils and spices that you mix the vegetables and rice with. Pat and I really liked it and if you were really hungry this was definitely the meal to order as it is customary to be offered 2nds and 3rds until you no longer wanted more. Other dishes included fried rice, soups, sherpa stew (potatoes, vegetable, rice, dumplings and noodles, in a thick broth), fried potatoes, eggs all styles, breakfast was often porridge or corn flakes with hot milk, some special treats were chapati and tibetan bread with jam or honey. The food was always good and the hot drinks were always yummy too such as hot lemon, lemon tea, milk tea, or less expensive was just plain old boiled water which often tasted rather smoky from sitting on top of the wood stove too long. The water was taken right from the river and either had to be filtered, iodine treated or boiled. Our water filter worked in the lower elevations, but as we ascended it began to freeze up and made it difficult. Other treats included the occasional snickers bar, or can of Pringles this one time we even found salt and vinegar flavors. At one of the lodges we met an Australian/British/Irish guy who at one time bought a can of Pringles, a snickers bar and a twix bar and enjoyed them all at one sitting even sharing his loot after no one decided to go half with him. He was a character! Shaun if you read this it was great meeting you and hope to see you in Germany.
A few days into the trek we met a man named Yakpu Sherpa, and he informed us about the Maoist rebels in Nepal, explaining they control the entire lower valley and for us to be careful since we were Americans. Well it was a bit late to hear that since the evening before we found out, only after a 14 year old boy asked Pat if he wanted to see his bomb, that we were staying at a Maoist owned lodge. They knew we were Americans since earlier I was trying to speak Nepali with a 14-year old girl there, but they gave us no problems and treated fairly. We found out later in our trek from an Israeli couple that they had searched his bag, but gave them no real trouble either. That same evening we met Yakpu we also had fun teaching a few children how to make card houses. They were quite good at it after hours of building.
Well we safely reached the upper hills with no injuries just a few blisters here and there. Lukla is a village at about 9300 feet where many tourists fly to on small little planes like I described before to begin trekking to Kala Pattar. We past this village up and headed on a couple hours further to a village called Phakding where we stayed the night and had our first “hot” shower after 5 days. Well I say “hot” because it wasn’t and the shower room was drafty and cold, but o did we smell, so we braved the luke cool water and the drafty bathroom with incredibly cold tile flooring. Drying was a whole other problem considering we did not have a proper towel, just a thin sarong that traveled with us from Fiji. Luckily there was a hot wood stove in the dining room where I was able to dry my hair before going to bed. Not sure what the point of a shower was since we had to put on the same smelly clothing the next day. Whatever, everyone smelled anyway. Besides, Pat’s feet gave a whole new meaning to the word smelly. Sorry Pat. The next day we had a very long climb (from 8661 feet to 11,319 feet) up to Namche a bustling, thriving village meant for trade and each Saturday is a very large market where local people from near and far including Tibet come to sell and trade goods. It is a place where most trekkers stop being a major acclimatisation stop. We stayed 2 nights and on our rest day we hiked up to the Everest View Hotel (U.S. $271 per night) to view Everest for the first time on our trek. The panoramic view was amazing, so many peaks! We had a gorgeous sunny day for this and were amazed at the grandeur of stretching row of peaks.
The hike was a bit difficult since at this elevation oxygen level is decreased, but the only time it really had an affect on us and became bothersome was when we were sleeping and experienced periodic breathing. I won’t get into the physiology behind that, but you are suddenly awoken and feel as if you can’t get enough air. It doesn’t last long, but is a bit annoying. Some mild cases of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) altitude sickness are headache, dizziness, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, periodic breathing and vomitting. Most trekkers have some of these symptoms you are just warned not to continue up in elevation until the symptoms are gone. Although some worse cases and more severe symptoms include unconsciousness and we did see flying over head on our trek a total of 3 rescue helicopters getting seriously ill trekkers to a hospital immediately. Each year deaths occur from AMS mostly because trekkers have a limited amount of time to get to Kala Pattar and go too quickly ignoring mild altitude symptoms which turn into severe symptoms. There is a medication that is readily available throughout Nepal called Diamox which helps the body acclimate, but since we had many days for our trek we decided to acclimate the natural way, by staying hydrated and taking it slow. We did decide on the day up to Kala Pattar 18,373 feet from Lobouche at 16,207 feet to take the medication since we had planned to sleep at such a high elevation. Okay enough of the acclimatisation lesson.
After enjoying Namche we headed on and arrived in Tengbouche where a famous Monastery is located but unfortunately it was closed the day were there and we could only see the outside. It is beautiful though. We at this point started to come in contact with more trekkers and met John and Kylie a couple from Australia whom we bumped into at later times along the trek. Our next village was Pengbouche where we stayed at a beautiful lodge with a nice warm sun room and our bedroom windows had the sun beating in all day warming up our room at night. This was the first elevation where I began having alititude problems resulting in an extra night at this lodge to acclimate. The next night was a village called Dingbouche (many bouche’s Pat could never keep them straight). This is another acclimatisation stop needing a stay of 2 nights. It was getting very cold we were now at an elevation of 14,271 feet. At the Snowy Lion lodge is where we met some trekking companions. Anna and Marco from Holland, David from Australia, Paola Andrea from Columbia, Shaun from Ireland originally (but has lived all over the place and seen a lot of the world I couldn’t keep it all straight). We took a day hike to Chukhung with the group on our rest day and then continued on up to Kala Pattar with Anna and Marco in the days following.
The day finally arrived when we would climb Kala Pattar. From a distance it looks rather puny and insignificant but the climb up the black rock changed my view quickly. It was a difficult slow climb up as the reduced oxygen levels made each step hard work. The wind at the top was outrageous and scrambling up the large rocks to get to the very tip of the cliff was scary unless you stayed very low as to not get blown off. The 360 degree view was unbelievable and so “in your face” is the statement I continue to use to describe what I saw. It is one of the most popular view points to see the great mountain, overlook Everest base camp, the Khumbu icefall, glaciers and other famous peaks. The glacier was amazing and many avalanches were heard as we ascended and descended. We were even able to see an avalanche happen on the ridge across from us. It was amazing. We had 45 minutes at the top and enjoyed a snickers bar while taking it all in. After about 45 minutes the clouds started rolling in and the wind had taken a toll on our noses and cheeks, so we began our descent. We were beat for the rest of the day and played countless games of cribbage as we did the entire 20 days of trekking. Dad it is pretty rare now that I miss counting any points of mine, so get ready for some good competition on my return. I am even getting good at pegging points. Hope I don’t sound to full of myself, but Pat will agree (I think).
Anyway I had my first bout of food poisoning since we began traveling and was pretty sick for 2 days. Having to spend 2 nights in the outhouse in below freezing temperatures did help matters. I won’t get into too much detail but nothing would stay in or down and all I wanted was a warm bed and a normal toilet. Instead of a normal toilet I had to settle for the stinky, slippery (from frozen pee) hole in the floor. It was rough and I am glad it only lasted 2 nights. I was rather weak after the few days and our 5 hour day of hiking turned into 8 hours because of my slow weak pace. We did take a break hiking one day as I could not get the energy to walk at all remaining in our cold room snuggled under my sleeping bag, pat’s sleeping bag along with both our down jackets on top of that, with one extra blanket supplied by the lodge. Wearing my long underwear fleece jacket, hat and gloves. Pat had to take a picture partly because he could not get over my long overdue shower resulting in terribly greasy hair. We ended up showerless for 15 days!
We had a quick change of plans once I felt better and we had talked to some other trekkers. Our plan after Kala Pattar was to go to Gokyo another beautiful area with awesome views of peaks and lakes, but trekkers we had been meeting that had already gone there said the snow was way to deep and it was difficult hiking. We decided to head back to Namche and Lukla fly back to Kathmandu and trek in a whole other area of Nepal called the Annapurna Region. On our way back we had 2 long days of hiking stayed one night in Namche again and even payed for a shower which was a huge pain and big disappointed as the water only stayed hot for 2 minutes literally and we froze our butts off! After that ordeal it was late in the evening and cold and drying my hair was a long 20 minute process in front of a space heater being sure I did not catch my hair on fire. So anyway when we reached Lukla we bought our plane tickets which was another flight similar to the first. The night before the flight we met Trudy and Ian at the lodge we stayed at and for the first time since a few minutes in Thailand we saw T.V. We watched BBC news realized war was inevitable and learned all about the man behind Starbucks and also enjoyed watching the IMAX video about Everest.
When we arrived back in Kathmandu we headed of to the hotel we first stayed at and enjoyed the longest, hottest shower of my life. WOW I never thougth I could enjoy a shower so much.
We were confined to our hotel room for most of the day yesterday because of a national holiday called Holi. The events of the day were water balloon throwing from everywhere, roof tops, windows, from anywhere on the sidewalks and streets. No one is excluded and tourists are targeting as you can imagine. It is all fun and games often buckets of water being poured down on people from rooftops. If it was water it would not have been a big deal or if we had more than one outfit (all our other clothes were being washed) but because this festival celebrates the coming of spring paint and color aare also mixed with the water. People walked around stained with the color of red mostly but also blue, and green. It is a riot and we did participate from the roof top of our hotel. Today the streets are stained the color of red and people are still stained also. That’s all for now. We leave in 2 days for the next trek.
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