I’ve decided to do this blog entry a little different. I’m going to do an entry for everyday that I was gone. Well, I may combine a few of the entries together for the times we spent multiple days in one village. This way you can get a little better description of my epic journey to the top of the world, or at least the bottom of the top of the world. Joining me in this journey were my two partners, Nathaniel and Alissa and three journeymen, Robby, Jay, and Becca (one was about to finish his two years and the other two had been in Nepal for two weeks). Also one guy named Aaron who lived in Nepal five years ago and is back for a short time visiting friends.
Day 1 10/30/2010
Today we flew into Lukla airport. If you didn’t already know about Lukla airport I will explain it to you. Lukla airport was voted as the most extreme airport in the world by National Geographic. It’s at the base of the highest mountain range in the world. As you fly in all you can see is a very short runway and then a mountain wall. If you short the runway then you hit a cliff wall and if you shoot long you hit another cliff wall. You must have precise landing technique. After we landed we grab some lunch before heading out on our wonderful adventure. We left Lukla and headed to village of Phakding. We stayed in the lodge of a friend of Robby’s. He had a nice lodge and served some great Chinese food. We watched a couple movies in his lodge including Into Thin Air...not the best movie to watch right before heading in to the mountains.
Day 2-3 10/31/2010-11/1/2010
Happy Halloween. We all decided to dress like trekkers for Halloween this year. It was difficult to find all the necessary equipment to pull the look off, but we were able to do it. Today we had a long hike ahead of us. We headed from Phakding to Namache Bazar. The elevation change was pretty big. It took us almost all day to get there. We finished the last hour or so in the rain and it was getting dark. It was called the Namache hill, although there’s more than one of them, was a brutal hill. It put a strain on some of the guys who hadn’t hiked in a long time and were a little out of shape. Nothing special happened on that trek, but I was able to have some good conversations with the some of the people in our group. We stayed in a nice lodge that night where we enjoyed some hot food and a nice hot fire. We didn’t do much seeing as it was a long day and it was raining at the time. We were going to stay in Namache the following day. After a good night’s sleep, we got up and headed out into the village. Namache is the largest village in all of the Khumbu area. It has a couple large bazaars, including one where people form Tibet can come and sell their goods. We walked around the village and did some praying. Prayer walking has become one of my new favorite things to do. We spent some time talking to some shop owners that Robby and Aaron knew. I found a few things in Namche that I was really glad to have- one of them being gummy bears. I also found a nice pair of soft-shell pants and a book. Later, I went with Aaron to go visit his bakery friend. We sat down and had a cup of coffee and bought some bread to go with the soup I was going to have with dinner. One of the funniest things that happened was that Robby and Nathaniel got locked out of the lodge. They went to go visit some friends late at night and the lodge owners locked the door. Luckily I was up late reading and was able to help them get in. They had to scale the wall to my third story window to be let in. It was pretty funny. That was our time in Namche. We would be returning to this town towards the end of our trip and spend another couple days here.
Day 4-6 11/2/2010-11/4/2010
From Namache we hiked to a village called Thame. We brought with us from Kathmandu three boxes of books for the school in Thame. The hike to Thame was a beautiful one through pine trees, snow-capped peaks on each side, and small streams flowing here and there. We stayed at a lodge of an old friend of Aaron and Robby’s. After we got to Thame we didn’t really do anything. Some people went and visited some places in the village, but I stayed in the lodge and finished my book that I had gotten the day before. I actually ended up giving that book to the school the next day when we dropped off the rest of the books. We also filled our time with many a game of spades. The following day we brought the books to the school. The school was excited to have them seeing as the year before the person who had built their library had burned a lot of the books. That afternoon some of us went around the village doing some prayer walking for the village and for our team. Nathaniel had gotten sick the night before and thrown up a couple times. We all sat around the lodge that night along with about 30 other trekkers in our lodge. It was packed out. That night all the guys stayed in the same room, all five of us, because of all the other trekkers there the lodge owner asked us to move into the room since we knew him well. None of us minded and actually liked it better than just being in pairs. Our last day in Thame we mostly spent resting. We had a “beach day” in the morning. The village had a small reservoir for the power plant nearby so we just went and sat around it relaxing, and some of us even took naps. After lunch we hiked up to the monastery. It’s the oldest monastery in all of Khumbu. It wasn’t that amazing of a monastery, but it was still fun to hike. After about three days in Thame I was ready to move onto the next village.
Day 7-8 11/5/2010-11/6/2010
Before we left from Thame we were given a little show from the kids of the school. Seeing as it was the largest Buddhist festival at that time they did a little song and dance for us. It was actually pretty cool. After that we headed out for a village called Khunde. Again, we stayed in the lodge of one of Aaron’s friends. It was a nice little lodge. That night Jay taught us a new card game called Scum. It was a fun game that allowed for all 7 of us to play at the same time, something spades couldn’t do. The following day we stayed in Khunde. We all got showers for the first time in over a week. We all needed it bad, and our clothes needed it worse. We sat around all morning reading and just waiting for our turn to get a shower. After lunch we headed to a village about 15 minutes from Khunde called Khumjung. The crazy thing about Khumjung is there is rumored to be the skull of a Yeti there. Now, I was able to see this skull and even take pictures and it’s not a Yeti skull. We looked it up on the internet and some German scientist did research on it and found out that it’s some bear. That night looked almost exactly like the night before. We played cards and talked about what was ahead of us. Aaron was thinking about staying behind and not continuing on the rest of the journey. He wanted to stay behind and spend more time with his friends in the lower villages instead of going to base camp with us.
Day 9-10 11/7/2010-11/8/10
Aaron did decide to stay behind. It was sad that he was staying behind, but we all knew that he came here to visit friends and talk to them instead of trekking to all the tourist places. Now our team was down to six people. Today we were going to head towards Gokyo. Our hope was that we could make it in two days, but our porters were thinking more like three days. The hike wasn’t an easy one. The first part of the hike was a straight downhill hike, which killed my knees. I tried to keep a slow pace, but if everyone else was moving pretty fast so I had to keep up. I really hate going downhill. After going down for an hour we headed up for a couple more. Because of the late start we got that day, we weren’t able to make it as far as we had hoped. Although the uphill part was brutal, it was beautiful. Through thick pine wood forest, snow piled up here and there, frozen streams running here and there, and even some wildlife. We all just chilled in the lodge playing cards once again. We sat in there all night laughing until they began to start closing the dining room and we had to go to bed. We got up early the next day and struck out for Gokyo, but once again we only made it half as far as we hoped. Jay had been struggling too much and needed to stop for the day. Everyone took the afternoon off to rest. The altitude was beginning to affect the team. Sleeping was becoming difficult and the walking was not easy either. I sat around drinking tea and reading. That night Jay decided to head back down and meet up with Aaron. The high altitude hiking was getting to him, plus he would rather spend time talking with people than climbing peaks.
Day 11-12 11/9/2010-11/10/2010
Today we made it to Gokyo. It wasn’t a horrible hike, but it had its difficult parts. There are a few really cool things about Gokyo. First, there are the lakes that surround the village - massive glacier lakes that are easily a mile across in some spots. They’re all a greenish blue color. The largest of them was set into the mountains. The snow capped peaks casting their shadows over the lake were beautiful. I once again bought another book. This one was about how East German, Soviet, and Chinese spies planed on taking over Nepal during the cold war. In the lodge I was able to meet a trekker from Australia. He was a pretty cool guy working for Kodak taking pictures of Nepal. It was cool to meet trekkers and have the opportunity to share with them. We were talking so late that some of the porters began to come in and start going to sleep. That was when we decided to go to bed. We were going to be getting up at 5 am to climb a 5360 meter peak (17,585 feet). We all got up the next morning and headed out for the peak. It was still very dark when we started out. It wasn’t a hard hike. I didn’t feel the effects of the altitude like I thought I would. We got to the top and sat around taking pictures and relaxing. We were up there for about an hour before we headed down. It was awesome to be up that high seeing the peaks at almost eye level. We were also able to catch the sunrise as it hit the peaks all around us. We got a great view of the different lakes as well as the glacier we would be walking over the following day to do the Cho La pass. That afternoon we once again sat around resting from the morning. We talked to a few more trekkers as well as some of the guys that ran the lodge. We got some phone numbers and hoped to hook up with them when they’d come down to Kathmandu. The plan for the following day was to get up and head to the base of the Cho La Pass, stay the night, and then head out early the next morning.
Day 13 11/11/10
So, today is my mom’s birthday… well, at least in America. I was able to call her and talk to her for about 10 minutes or so. I won’t lie, it brought tears to my eyes when I was able to talk to her. There are just times that I really become home sick. I have been gone from home for almost 4 months at this time and I’m beginning to miss home a little. After talking to her we all headed across the glacier towards the Cho La pass. It was cool walking through the glaciers - hearing the rock falls and the ice cracking in different places. We were actually walking on the ice, just the rocks that were over the top of the ice. We got to the lodge and chilled. We were going to be getting up at 3 am the following morning to do the pass. Apparently, if you don’t get to the top in time the ice and snow begin to melt causing problems.
Day 14 11/12/2010
Today we did the Cho La pass. It was a mix of thoughts and emotions as we were doing it. I loved and hated it all at the same time. We got up at 3 and packed. I let the porters carry my bag for this. I wasn’t about to kill myself carrying my 45 lbs pack up over the pass. I carried my small day pack with water, camera, food, and some other stuff. The first part of the hike wasn’t too bad. It was a nice gradual climb. Once we got to the top of the first ridge we could finally see the pass. It looked horrible. We had to hike down a little and then across a flat spot to the actually bottom of the pass. We couldn’t even see a path going up to the top. We had to climb over tons of boulders that had formed from many a rock slide before. We never once felt the sun until we got to the top of the pass. It took us about 5 hours to make it to the top. I couldn’t feel most of the parts of my body. It was easily in the 20s climbing to the top of the pass. Once we made it to the top we soaked in as much sun as we could. We munched a little on some of the snacks and food we had brought. Then we began our journey down. For the first 30 minutes we walked across snow and ice. It was pretty cool. If you got off the path there was a good chance you would just fall through into a crevasse, so we stayed on the path. After the snow we walked through another boulder strewn path. It took us about 2 to get to the bottom of the pass. At that point I was hurting. My knees didn’t like the hike down and my back was killing me from my pack pulling on my shoulders. It was well worth the pain. Then for about 30 minutes we walked across a flat plain to our lodge in Zugla. Zugla. It was the worst hole in the wall place we had stayed in yet. All the rooms were filled so we had to sleep in the porter room. It was a giant bunk bed that slept about 15 people. All 5 of us slept on the bottom bunk. Some slept and others sat and read. I met an American guy who had sold everything he had to travel the world. We were able to teach each other some new forms of solitaire.
Day 15 11/13/10
Now we began our journey to Everest Base Camp. We headed from Zugla to Lobuche. After about 15 minutes of hiking I had to shed some layers. I had to get rid of both my thermal bottoms and top. I hiked the rest of the day in just my t-shirt and my soft-shell pants. It was a simple hike around a small mountain to Lobuche. I started and finished a book today. I have read a lot on this trip and I’ve enjoyed it. Nothing special happened on this short hike or at this village. Tomorrow we would be heading to base camp though.
Day 16-17 11/14/2010-11/15/2010
Today was a long day. We hiked from Lobuche to Gorak Shep, which wasn’t easy. It was all up and down through the Khumbu glacier. It was a cool walk as we started getting closer the tallest points in the world. We could barely see the top of Everest from anywhere on the trail. After we made it to Gorak Shep we had lunch and headed to base camp. It was a simple little hike. It took us about an hour and a half to get there. We were at 5364 meters (17,598 feet). It was awesome to be at such an amazing place, but to be honest Everest Base Camp sucked. I half expected to see a place where they could set up mass camps for people attempting the summit. It was just a bunch of rocks. The best part was being able to call my family and my girlfriend from base camp. My crappy Nepali phone was able to catch signal and I called my family and Jess at 2 am their time. They all didn’t mind being woken up to talk to me at Everest Base Camp. It was an experience that I will never forget. Plus it just gives me a trump card on anyone. We hiked back and just chilled in the lodge as usual. Alissa was not taking the high altitude very well and was getting sick. Nathaniel, Robby, and Becca were also not taking it as well, but better than Alissa. I have been the only one who hasn’t had any problems sleeping with the altitude or felt symptoms of altitude sickness. Not sure why that is, but I’m thankful. Also, I have yet to wear my down jacket on this trip. I’ve used my down sleeping bag in a traditional manner. I unzip it completely and use it like a blanket instead of getting inside it. If I sleep in it like a normal sleeping bag, I get to hot. The following morning me, Nathaniel, and Robby got up at 4 am to hike a peak called Kala Patthar. It is a 5550 meter (18,208 feet) peak that is right next to Everest. It gives you a great view of the surrounding area. We hoped to get to the top right as sunrise was happening, but we were too fast and had to sit up on the top to wait for it. We were really cold. We discovered that screaming at the top of our lungs helped keep us warm. We got some good pictures and then headed back down. We got back at the bottom by 7 am. We were surprised by how fast we were able to do the peak. When we got to the bottom we convinced the girls that we had thrown up and blacked out and never made it to the top and that Nathaniel needed to be helicopter out of there. They didn’t like us when we told them we were joking. After that we had a long day planned a head of us. We hoped to get down about a 1000 meters to help those that weren’t dealing with the altitude well. We ended up at a place called Pheriche by mid afternoon. We stayed in the nicest lodge in all of Nepal, well, at least in my opinion. They had great food and even better beds. I picked up a fourth book at the lodge.
Day 18 11/16/2010
I slept wonderfully that night in my nice comfy bed. The plan was to make it to Tengboche today, but since Alissa wasn’t feeling well, we thought we may only make it half way. We made it to a place called Pengboche for lunch. It was a nice little village where we thought we might spend the night depending on how Alissa felt. She felt well enough to continue on, and we finished our nice little trek to Tengboche. The walk was beautiful. It felt as if we were walking our way through Lord of the Rings. Then we walked past Rivendale…wait, what? Yes, we actually walked through a village called Rivendale in an area that did look a lot like we were walking through Lord of the Rings. The small town of Tengboche was a nice little village. It had a great little bakery where they had coffee and apple pie. After enjoying our wonderful pie and coffee we ventured on to the movie theater. It was an eco center where they showed a documentary about the area. It was a nice little show. We enjoyed yet another game of scum that night.
Day 19-20 11/17/2010-11/18/2010
Last night was a very interesting night. Nathaniel had an episode in his sleep once again. It was hilarious. Me, Nathaniel, and Robby were staying in the same room that night when me and Robby were awakened by Nathaniel screaming in his sleep. He woke up screaming “Where are we? Where are we? Tell me where I am.” Robby woke up yelling “We’re in Tengboche. We’re in Tengboche.” I would like to describe it better to you, but it’s one of those things that you just need to be there for. I wasn’t really surprised by Nathaniel yelling in his sleep because this was not the first time. A couple hours later it actually happened again. The second time he talked about the door being open and someone touching him. Once again, it was weird, but I went right back to sleep. When I finally woke up the next morning I wasn’t feeling well. I wasn’t even able to eat breakfast, which is just sad. Today we walked from Tengboche to Namche. I was not a huge fan of this walk. After not eating breakfast I didn’t have a whole lot of energy and my pack was a little bit heavier so it was not fun. We made it to Namche around lunch time where I had a nice bowl of pasta at the bakery, followed by a nice long nap and some good old book reading. After my nap I went down to the Tibetan Market. The people from Tibet are allowed into Nepal as far down as Namche to sell their wares. They had a lot of cool stuff there, but nothing worth buying. I had pizza at dinner, but wasn’t able to eat much of it since I still wasn’t feeling well. I was hoping that a little bit of sleep would get rid of whatever was bothering me… it didn’t. I woke up a couple times in the night to what seemed like the scene from Dumb and Dumber. I’ll let you think about that one and not go into any detail. I finally rolled out of bed around 10:30 and went and grabbed a cinnamon role and some coffee from the bakery. I was beginning to feel a lot better after eating. After lunch I felt almost perfect. I was able to sit and read my book for a few hours and actually finish it. That makes 4 books that I had finished on this trip. One of the nicest things was that I had a double room by myself. I spread everything out in the room to try and let it air out. Being back in Namche was nice. I was able to get a new book, some more gummy bears, and a decent price on a coke.
Day 21 11/19/2010
Today we were heading home… well, sort of. We were traveling to Lukla where we would be flying home. We got up and had breakfast at the bakery. I was ready to go by 9, which was the appointed time for us to be leaving. There was always one problem with us leaving every morning. Robby and Nathaniel took way too long to get ready in the mornings. They were 45 minutes late to us leaving. It was like that every day that we tried to leave a place… oh well. We headed back towards Pheriche. It was a much nicer walk to Pheriche from Namche than the other way around. We were greeted by a nice cup of cappuccino. We watched a couple of movies and had the best meal ever. It was like a 5 course meal. The owner of the lodge was a great guy. He is a follower. It was just awesome to see a light in such a dark place. The owner of the lodge gave us t-shirts, which was great. They had a map of Khumbu on the back. Then I slept great. We had comfy beds and being at the lower altitude may have helped a lot. Tomorrow we would be heading to Lukla.
Day 22-24 11/20/2010-11/22/2010
Today we hiked to our final destination, Lukla. It was a short little hike, but still all uphill. I was glad to be done with hiking. No more hiking for the remainder of my time in Nepal. Now the thing with Lukla had been clouded in for 5 days canceling all the flights. There were hundreds of people stuck in Lukla. The government actually flew helicopters up there once the clouds had cleared out to pick people up and fly them back to Kathmandu. We sat for a while at the lodge and watched planes coming in and out. Later we ventured down to the local Starbucks and had a nice cup of coffee. It wasn’t a real Starbucks, but the coffee was great. We even watched a few episodes of Man vs. Wild. It was almost like home. That night we enjoyed yet another game of Scum. Tomorrow we would be spending the day in Lukla. The next day was actually pretty cool. I sat and watch the planes fly over my head for almost 3 hours. It was cool to see the planes fly into the world’s most extreme airport. Nothing else really special happened that day. I sat in Starbucks for a few more hours reading book number 5 and drinking more coffee. After 23 days in the mountains we would finally be going home. We got up around 6:30 and packed our bags and headed to the airport. We waited for about 2 hours at the airport before we flew out. It was a short 30 minute flight home. Once we got back the first thing I did was take a shower. It had been 15 days since I had taken a shower and it was much needed. By noon I was showered, dressed in clean clothes, and ready for lunch.
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