4th January
Woke up a little later than yesterday this morning - feeling much better than yesterday. Still missing my appetite BUT I'm sure it'll reappear sooner rather than later.
While I was sleeping a few brave souls (Kev, Torbs & Ash from memory) made the ascent up Kala Patthar - meaning 'black rock' - to catch the sun rise and get a good view of Mt Everest itself. From all reports it was a hard climb and extremely cold (I believe their water bottles froze on the way up) but the view was magnificent! While they were up there Torbs tied a prayer flag up on the summit with everyone signatures... well everyone EXCEPT mine - I was too busy sleeping off my BC exhaustion (Thanks guys!)
So anyways, today we started on our return journey. Pretty much we'd be doing the trek that KTP and I did on the way to get here - so at least we had some idea of what to expect. Poor Alicia was still suffering through a splitting headache - but as it was all downhill (kinda..) from here, she'd hopefully be feeling some relief soon.
We started off trekking to Loubche (to the teahouse that smells like Yak Bark!) where we had some morning tea, before making our way back along the river and down that killer hill (much quicker this time!) to have lunch at the tea house with the stinky toilet... (and yes I can confirm that the toilet still smells as bad as we thought it did). Lunch arrived eventually (took like 1.5hrs!) and we started head back through the valley that Raj had pointed out to us previously (when we were on our way to Loubche!)
We eventually made it to this smallish town which we thought was going to be our resting place for the evening... only to discover we actually had another hour or so to go! (According to Raj this place is too cold and windy to stay at!) I guess another hour today means an hour less of walking tomorrow?!
We followed the river, crossing some dodgy bridge and walking up hill (argh!) for a little while. It started to get quite cold, especially as the sun was starting to set - however watch the lights rays disappear slowly along the valley was pretty spectacular. KTP and Alicia (KTP just wanting to get it all over with) were far ahead of me but I had a good chat with Torbs along the way and it was a relatively pleasant journey... if a bit long and kinda cold.
We eventually reach Orse and KTP and I quickly realized we had been here before - it was the tea house in the 'middle of nowhere' (previously surrounded by snow) that we stopped at for morning tea while on our way to Dhingboche! The dining room was nice and warm - and as a treat we bought ourselves some popcorn and some PRINGLES (expensive but worth it!).
Spent most of the evening by the fire playing cards with KTP, Joel and Torbs - a bit of cheat, some 500 and quite a bit of Shithead - cause we're classy like that!
