To Namche & Beyond

28th - 29th of December

We were up relatively early again today for our trek to Namche Bazaar (3440 m) – the last real ‘BIG’ town on our trek. Didn’t really sleep very much – no major reason why – just kinda laid in my sleeping bag for most of the night. It was relatively cold – but not TOO bad, though I did wear my thermals to bed for the first time.

Apparently though, it can be quite difficult to sleep in high altitudes (we are currently only 2610 m above sea level… BUT it is a lot higher than what I’m normally used too!!) and you can also have extremely vivid dreams… thou I guess I’d have to actually get some sleep to experience that!!

The trek to Namche Bazaar was probably our first real ‘test’ for the trek. While we were walking only 9 km it took ~ 6 hours as we had to climb a long way up right at the end (known as a Nepali ‘straight up!’). The first few hours were a Nepali ‘flat’, which consisted of “little” ups and downs as we made our way along the Dudh Kosi River – actually crossing it by swing bridges 5 times!!
The swing bridges are kinda interesting to walk across – as quite often they seem to be swinging up as your foot is coming down and then you end up all out of sync… it just a little weird. You also have lots of obstacles to pass – yak caravans, porters carrying trekkers bags… or 80kg of glass using only their foreheads and backs(!!... it’s AMAZING!). At one stage I was walking along a bridge and I heard a rustling behind me and realized there was a guy, right on my tail, carrying 60 – 70kg of empty plastic water bottles on his back (it was these massive bags that were twice his height and twice as wide)!! I practically had to jog down the bridge to give him enough room… it felt very raiders of the lost ark!!

Just before lunch we entered to Sagarmatha National Park – Sagarmatha is the Nepali name for Everest – and finally saw our first glance of EVEREST in a small clearing as we started making our way up (UP UP!) to Namche Bazaar. While the ‘overall’ altitude gain between Phaking and Namche is ~800 m, because we have to go down to floor of the valleys to cross the river we probably climbed up much further (someone we met along the way suggested it was a climb closer to 1500 m!) Either way it was a LOOOONG way up and took 2 – 3 hours to complete. KTP & I firmly planted ourselves as the tortoises of the group (everyone else seems to be moving VERY quickly)… but we are not that much slower really… and we get to hang out the back with Raj, who has been able to answer all our stupid questions.

Our first sight of Namche was definitely a sight for sore eyes – it’s a bit like a big alpine town… though it’s slightly unusual in that it seems have multiple levels… its quite hard to describe actually… but when I finally post photos you’ll understand… but there’s probably like another 200 m in altitude gain from the bottom entrance of the town to the top – and about 6 – 7 levels of buildings between the two.

As we climbed up to our teahouse we passed the Tibetan markets, which is filled with Tibetan refugees who have escaped from Tibet with goods (like shoes, pants, etc.) to sell. They all live in these flimsy tents made out of tarpaulin, despite the fact it is freezing here! It’s quite sad actually.

We did eventually make it to our teahouse, tired and weary, and had a nice hot meal and a relatively early evening… despite the fact we had a bit of a sleep in the next morning as we were staying on in Namche for one more night to help acclimatize.

Acclimatization day was relatively peaceful – we spent the morning walking up to higher altitudes and then returned for the afternoon to rest and relax and then sleep.

We first walked up to visit a local museum, which despite Raj describing as ‘not very interesting’, wasn’t too bad. It had lots of information about the National Park and the surrounding fauna and flora, as well as info on the Sherpa culture and some of the programs Hillary had set up. We probably spent 20 – 30 minutes up there, as there were also great views of the mountains from there as well. Even more interesting were the military exercises happening right next to us at the army barracks!!

After seeing the museum, we headed back down to head straight back up again to the highest airport IN THE WORLD…. From memory I think it’s around 3750 m above sea level… on a mountain… and is funnily enough called ‘Mountain’!! While there is still a runway there, planes are no longer allowed to land there as there have been too many accidents, and the airport is now only being used by helicopters.

After a MASSIVE lunch we spent most of the afternoon exploring the town (not that interesting really…) and picking up a few essentials including our new walking poles (named Moses 2.0 (A), Hesus 2.0 (S) & pole (K)) which I think will be quite handy.

Another earlish nigh as we head off again tomorrow to Phortse Gaon (a random Sherpa village).

Brennan (KTP & Alicia)