Wednesday 18 April 2012

One wrong step, and you fail the course.

After Namche we were in Phortse for 2 nights. On the "rest day" in between, we hiked far uphill to a summer pasture where the Sherpa people bring their yaks to graze. Then we continued up to a small peak at just over 4100m. The lodge was great, but conditions are declining from there. Last night we had a local elder who has expeditioned with Sir Edmund Hillary speak to us about village life and how it has changed from Tourism.
So we're in Pangboche - a very small Himalayan village that miraculously has internet. We left Phorste this morning at 8 am, and had a relatively short hike (3 hours including breaks) up and down the cliff side. Along the way, we saw griffins, pheasants, and what Reid thought was a dead body (we're pretty sure it was just a stray red jacket stuck to a tree in the distance).
Upon arrival we feasted on shell pasta with yak cheese and tomato sauce - yum! We've been eating a lot of potatoes lately. We visited another monestary that was over 600 years old.
We finally have an updated schedule for the rest of our trekking. The following is our plans for the next 10 days:
19th: Trek from Pangboche to Dingboche (also, Jamie's birthday!!!)
20th: Trek from Dingboche to Chekkung
21st: "Rest day" in Chekkung
22nd: Trek from Chekkung to Lobuche (we hear this is a tough one)
23rd: Trek from Lobuche to Gorak Shep, and climb Kala Pattar after lunch.
24th: From Gorak Shep to Base Camp, then straight down to Lobuche for the night.
25th: Trek from Lobuche to Tengboche
26th: "Rest day" in Tengboche
27th: Trek from Tengboche to Namche Bazaar
28th: Trek from Namche Bazaar to Lukla
29th: Early morning flight to Kathmandu.

We'll spend a night in Kathmandu then head down to Chitwan National Park for 2 nights. Then we'll be headed back to Canada!

Once again, we miss you all, and we will post again whenever there is internet (but no guarantees!!!).

Namaste,

Eva, Heather, and Jamie.

1 comment:

  1. You don't really miss us that much...and we're hoping we won' be missing any of you!!!
    ;-\

    ReplyDelete