Week 104 - Delhi, Kathmandu, Phakding, Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche (India, Nepal)

Leaving our hotel in Delhi we had a short walk to the airport Metro station. The train was fast and on time and before we new it we were at the airport and checked in. The flight was painless and the hardest part of the whole journey was trying to work out which queue we were supposed to be in to obtain our visa on arrival in Nepal. We were met at the airport by a representative from the trekking company (which we’d prebooked on Groupon, oh yes, some things never change) and had beautiful marigold fresh flower necklaces hung around our necks. Feeling like we were living the high life, we drove to the hotel where we’d be spending our first two nights in Kathmandu.

We were given a dingy basement room and quickly realised that the rooms given to the tour groups using the hotel were tucked away at the back. Being next to the kitchen, the smell of curry permeated our room and with all the crashing about, we requested to move and ended up in a far better room at the front. 

Once in the touristy Thamel area of Kathmandu, where every building is either a trek gear shop, souvenir shop, hotel or restaurant, we had some final purchases to make to prepare for the trek, dirt cheap hiking poles, water bottles, socks, hats and the like.

We’d also been in contact with Mario again, our favourite Portuguese and as it turned out he was in town. We caught up over delicious but pricey pizza before calling it a night.

The next morning we had a tour briefing in the hotel lobby. Half of our group had arrived a day early and already had their meeting so we only met a few of the 16 people we’d be joining to hike to Everest Base Camp. We received very brief instructions and were issued with our duffle bags with sleeping bags and puffer jackets, followed by a surprise luggage weigh in. For the flight to Lukla, the start of the trek, we were only allowed to carry 14kg, 4kg of which was taken up by the jacket and sleeping bag, not leaving much room for snacks and 12 days worth of clothes. A bit concerned and a few tough decisions about what to bring and what to leave later and we had to rush back to reception to meet the rest of our group for a day of sightseeing.

Our first stop was at a Tibetan refugee carpet warehouse where we watched rows and rows of Tibetan women working at an incredible speed to weave beautiful rugs. Next, we drove out to Durbar Square in Patan, supposedly one of the finest collections of temples and palaces and displays of Newari architecture in Nepal. The majority of the buildings date from the 14th to the 18th centuries and there’s a mix of tiered pagodas, stupas and shrines. Our guide was nice enough but his English wasn’t great and there was a lot of hesitation and repeating himself so actually following what he was saying was difficult and we soon lost concentration.

Tibetan lady spinning wool, Kathmandu.

Durbar Square, Patan, near Kathmandu.

Wandering the streets of Patan, near Kathmandu.

Next, we stopped by the ‘Golden Temple’ nothing at all like the Golden Temple we’d just visited in India but instead a small Buddhist temple with gold covering every surface. Interestingly, at the Golden Temple, the priest is a young boy under 12 who serves for 30 days before passing the duty to another young boy. Our next stop was at a singing bowl shop. Again, it was pretty drawn out as lots of people wanted to experience the healing qualities of the bowls. We’re a bit cynical and although we love the look of the bowls, we find it hard to believe that one that was hammered out on a full moon would really be any more powerful than any other and the steep price in the shop didn’t really seem justified especially with our tight budget. We ended up waiting outside for everyone to finish their shopping before wandering back to the bus. 

The Golden Temple, Patan, near Kathmandu.

We made one last stop on the tour, at Bodhnath. We ate in the compound while getting to know some of the people we’d be spending the next couple of weeks with before completing a loop of the stupa, taking hundreds of photos of the prayer flags waving in the wind. Bodhnath is a centre for Tibetan Buddhism and the eyes of the Buddha gaze out at you, painted brightly beneath the golden central tower. The stupa used to be on the trade route from Tibet to Kathmandu and attracted traders praying for safe journey through the high passes of the Himalaya, quite apt for our group.

Prayer flags at Bodhnath, Kathmandu.

Although the tour wasn’t done, we requested to be dropped back near the hotel along with two others. The trip was running late and we still had things to do before our early morning flight the following day and we’d arranged to meet Mario again for dinner. Knowing we would return to Kathmandu a number of times before leaving Nepal we didn’t feel rushed to continue the sightseeing.

We finished packing and finally managed to get our bags under the weight limit before heading out to find Mario. He was running late too and after we’d given up waiting and he’d chased us down the street, we ended up stumbling across a tiny, dirt cheap little restaurant called the Momo Cave. It was like sitting in someones spare room with hardly any furniture and a young boy to serve us.

We managed to get a relatively early night ready for the 4:45am start the next day to head to the airport. The domestic departures lounge was hidden around the back of a building site and when we got there it was still closed and our guides piled all our bags at the door. When you book a flight to Lukla, you don’t get a time and it’s done on a first come first served basis (from what we can gather) so it’s all a bit hectic.

The flight was incredible. One of the stewards at the airport had recommended we sit on the right of the plane and the views of the Himalayas were spectacular. A little 12 seater propellor plane with just one seat on each side of the aisle and a clear view into the cockpit. The flight was smooth and in no time we had arrived at Lukla, the highest and shortest commercial airstrip in the world, and the most dangerous. The airstrip itself is built with an incline to reduce the speed of the aeroplane on landing and to give an extra push to those taking off. 

Once off the flight we congregated in one of the guesthouses in town, enjoying the last of our packed breakfast boxes before perching on a stone staircase where we could watch the planes arriving into Lukla, screeching to a halt before picking up new passengers and heading out again, appearing to almost be catapulted down the ramp and back into the mountains.

Lukla airport, the highest, shortest and most dangerous airstrip in the world.

After an hour or so, it was time to start walking. The first day was far from strenuous and we didn’t cover much ground at all. Having traveled independently for so long, suddenly being part of a group and being told when and where to eat and sleep and having to wait for people all the time was a little frustrating. Although i’d worried about our fitness levels prior to the hike it was immediately evident that we were able to keep up with the front of our group without any hassle. The frustration over the excessively long waits, when we’d start to get cold and disheartened was to become a bit of a sore point for the next couple of days, until the weather improved and the clouds lifted to reveal some of the most spectacular mountain scenery you could ever imagine and which we could happily while away hours photographing and soaking in. 

The trek we’d booked on to was a Groupon special and for only marginally more money than it would have cost to organise independently, all the stress and hassle was taken out of the planning, we literally just had to turn up. For our group of 18 people we had two lead guides, Gelu and Furba, two assistant guides and nine porters to carry everything but our day bag essentials. The majority of the time, we walked with one of the assistant sherpas at the front who we bonded with after a few days and who, other than our nightly briefing, was our only real contact with a guide, it was a bit of a shame that his English wasn’t very good and we couldn’t really ask questions or learn much about our surroundings.

Our guides were Sherpas, probably the most well known of Nepal’s ethnic groups, their history tracing back to the days of nomadic Tibetan herders who moved to the Solu Khumba region of Nepal 500 years ago bringing with them Tibetan Buddhism, evident all over the countryside around Mount Everest through the prayer flags, beautiful gompas and carved mani’s with mantras praying for safe passage. With the increase of tourism in the Everest region after the Maoist rebellion, the Sherpa name has become synonymous with mountaineering and trekking.

The trek itself involved 12 days of walking, taking us from 2,795m in Lukla at the airport to Everest Base Camp at 5,300m and on to Kala Pattar at 5,545m, spending our nights at teahouses along the way. As the increase in altitude is quite marked, it’s necessary to take acclimatisation days to prevent altitude sickness so it takes about 8 days to ascend but only 4 to descend. Altitude sickness has claimed 200 lives on the trek in the last 40 years at altitudes of as low as 3,420m including two Australians recently who ignored advice and didn’t take time to aclimatise. In order to ensure we were all in health, each evening after dinner Gelu would take oxygen and heart readings for each of us to track any significant changes that could indicate we were having problems, fitness levels have nothing to do with how your body will react at altitude and there’s no way to tell if you’ll suffer or not until you get there.

The first day was only a short walk and saw us spending the night in Phakding at 2,620m. It wasn’t until we came to walk back to Lukla that we realised how much down hill there had been on this stage as we followed the trail along the Dudh Kosi Valley. We crossed some long bridges, fed noodles to the crows (there are crows everywhere), saw our first snow capped mountains and quickly learned to pass Buddhist stupas, flags and mani clockwise and to spin prayer wheels clockwise. Once in Phakding we gathered for a short excursion up to a monastery overlooking the village. As we started to climb (one of the steepest paths of the whole trail) the rain began and by the time we were at the top we were all wet and cold. Rhys took a nap before dinner then managed to sleep for a solid 11 hours waking up refreshed to start the second day.

Day two took us about 14km over long swaying bridges crossing the Dudh Kosi river and on to Namche Bazaar at 3,420m, where we were due to spend our first acclimatisation day. We spent lunch by the river side in Jorsale at 2,830m and entered into the Sagarmatha National Park (Sagarmatha being the local name for Everest). From this point on, as no animal could be killed in the National Park and all meat was to be carried up from lower levels, unrefrigerated and sitting around for who knows how long, most of the group opted to go vegetarian, I think Rhys found this part of the trip the most taxing and worse than the walk itself.

Buddhist stupas, manis and prayer flags on route to Namche.

Bridges spanning the Dudh Kosi on the way to Namche, (we crossed on the higher one).

Porters carrying twice their own body weight across the river.

The teahouse we were in in Namche had a dark and dingy common area and after a few games of cards, most of us turned in for an early night, with Karlie and Noemi on Ró entertainment duty, taking her out for a midnight walk. 

Namche was a decent size town and although we were in the shoulder season and a lot of the restaurants and bars were closed, there were enough souvenir stalls to get our attention. We’d see the contrast between the September and October trekking traffic when we returned during our decent and all were thankful we’d walked in shoulder season. Peak season might bring the best weather but it brings hundreds and hundreds of people and queues of up to an hour to even cross bridges, never mind the queues on the unstable paths when you reach Base Camp. We probably passed 100 or so other people on the trail at the same time as us, in October, numbers can reach 10,000 during the month and that doesn’t include those doing other hikes off the main trail and those climbing some of the smaller peaks, the most we had to wait for was a few yaks (or naks or even caks...) to walk passed carrying supplies to the teahouses on route.

We spent our acclimatisation day in Namche doing a short half day hike to a higher altitude, stopping at a National Park museum, before dropping back in to town for lunch. We walked up past the Shyangboche airstrip to a hotel that supposedly had great views but the clouds were in and we weren’t rewarded. Brendan, one of only five boys in our group, had been ill before we’d started the trek and was starting to struggle. That night his oxygen and heart rate reading was scary and it was the last we saw of him. The following morning he was too ill to continue and along with one of our assistant guides, made the decision to turn back to Lukla (where the weather meant the planes were backlogged and it took him three days to get out). Fingers crossed he gets another chance and makes it to Base Camp.

As we were back in Namche at lunch time, me and Rhys ducked out of the hotel to eat at a restaurant in town. We found it a little annoying that we were forced to eat at the teahouse where we were staying and that the tour company had failed to mention this to us in advance. Rooms are basic and dirt cheap but the price is dependent on you eating there and can quadruple if you eat out. We were happy to have breakfast and dinner there but felt a bit of variety for lunch wouldn’t go a miss and we had the best meal we probably had on the whole trip. We ended up going back to the same restaurant for hot lemon later with Ró, Karlie and Noemi to duck out of a rain storm and while away the afternoon after a short walk to another gompa and through a quarry full of carved mani (rocks covered with mantras and prayers).

The food on the trip was, in general, decent but extremely carb heavy and all the menus were the same. You could have fried rice, fried noodles or fried potatoes with a choice of carrots and cabbage, nak cheese or eggs, with momos (stuffed dumplings) for a rare treat.

By this point friendship groups had started to form and we spent most of our time with Karlie, Noemi, Ashleigh, Bryce and Ró, one of the funniest people i’ve ever had the pleasure to meet and who never failed to make the entire group laugh, I honestly don’t know who let her go to Nepal by herself when she can’t even make her own bed but am mighty glad she did. 

Our fourth day took us to Tengboche, another short day covering only 10km which saw us follow the river valley, getting our first views of Everest’s peak in the distance, to a series of water turned prayer wheels before a steep ascent into the village. Far smaller than Namche, the group of teahouses at Tengboche were centred around a monastary but when we arrived the clouds had rolled in (a lot of the time we’d be late leaving in the mornings while we waited for everyone to get ready and it would mean we’d get to view points after the clouds were already in). 

There was a ceremony at the gompa that evening so we wandered over and took seats against the walls to watch the monks bang on their drums and chant while being handed stacks of food stuff before popcorn was distributed to us in the wings. We stayed for about 30 minutes before leaving them too it, since we left Namche the weather was notably colder and we were wrapped up warm against the night chill, enjoying a yak dung fueled fire in the common area of the teahouse. I had a stonking altitude headache and the continuous drumming wasn’t really helping to calm it. I think most people suffered from the headaches at one point or another and they could get pretty bad, the best cure being to drink lots of water (you’re supposed to drink at least twice what you normally would when you’re at altitude), and to take painkillers.

The next morning we were woken early as the skies had cleared and we had breathtaking mountain views with Amadablam rising sharply in the foreground. There’s no better way top spend the morning than gazing out at the snow capped Himalaya before breakfast.

Ashleigh enjoying a beautiful start to the day, sun rise over Tengboche.

Rhys and Ró making the most of a clear morning in Tengboche.

Our trekking group, Ró, me, Kathryn, Alicia, Lynn, Stan, Noemi, Rex, Kathy, Ashleigh, V, Karlie, Natasha, Shirley, Erica, Rhys and Bryce.

After Tengboche, we continued our hike to Dingboche. The first hour or so flew by as we had clear skies and lots to look at as the sun rose over the valley, before we descended to cross the river again to Pangboche at 3,900m where we stopped for tea. Having seen the increasing price of bottled water (everything being carried in from Lukla in ridiculously big stacks balanced on ropes strapped across porters foreheads) we were extremely glad to have purification tablets. The trail continued to Shomare at 4,040m where we stopped for lunch and then on to Dingboche at 4,440m. That afternoon we climbed above the tree line and seemingly within metres the landscape turned to scrub, seperated near villages by stone walls.

Another spectacular valley view on route to Dingboche.

Hairy yaks passing us on their way down the valley.

Above the tree line, a change in scenary on the way to Dingboche.

It was too cold to do much in the evening with our teahouse on a ridge line and after dinner and cards in the yak dung warmed communal area, we turned in for an early night. The altitude was starting to show it’s affects and the cold was giving people bad coughs and sore throats. Sleeping was becoming more difficult and although the altitude makes you sleepy, you get vivid dreams and the extra liquids you have to drink mean you’re up several times each night limiting the amount of sleep you can actually get.