Raquel actually won a tour in Nepal (one of those click and share and you could win things that you think no-way could I ever win)! Thanks to Eagle Creek (a luggage and travel company) I was able to join them after their tour. I took a heap of photos for them. This trip wasn't confirmed until a little after I had given up on it so I didn't get the best deal on tickets or do as much pre-planning as I probably should have - a relatively common thing in my travels it seems. Still - a trip to Nepal = awesome.
Travel to Nepal took quite a while. I started off Monday driving down to Long Beach. On the way I dropped off my ballot and property taxes in Independence. That night I hung out with Tom Widdison and the next morning early he dropped me off at LAX. I waited a long time before my flight to Qatar. Before it got dark I was able to see some of the Mojave and places like Zion National Park from the air. It got dark passing SLC and was definitely too dark to see the Tetons. I was hoping that I might see the Northern Lights from the airplane as we went about as far north as Greenland on the great circle route. That was not to be though. I saw the Irish coastline around sunrise but then it clouded up over the rest of the Isles. I watched a lot of movies and sort of tried to sleep.
We landed in Qatar in the evening and I had a long layover. I was able to see the results of the US election and wandered around the airport for a while in a bit of a jet-lagged dazed funk. I tried to find a window for a distant lit up skyline photo but I failed. Eventually I slept in one of their "quiet" rooms. Actually it wasn't bad with a sleeping bag and the Klymit pad and Eagle Creek inflatable pillow. In the morning I took one of the Qatar tourism tours of Doha. It was good to get out of the airport and see a few of the sights although Qatar is a strange place. They are building like mad for the 2022 world cup. Only something like 15% of the population are actual citizens with all the benefits and priviledges that entails. The rest are workers from places like Nepal, India, Bangledash, Philipines, etc. I suspect their conditions and tretment vary wideley but at least they are trying to put a better spin on the situation with the scrutiny the world cup brings. Then it was back to the airport for some more waiting before my flight to Nepal. I actually got some work done with wifi in these 2 airports.
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In Nepal I went through the tourist visa rigamarole and then waited a long long time for my bags to arrive (I had 30 KG allowance but max bag weight was 50 lbs - my bag was 52 or something so I split it into 2 bags which was easy since one duffel was inside a sort of back panel of the bigger rolling bag). Once I got all my stuff I took a taxi to Thamel and eventually found Sam and Raquel (or they found me). Since I had been traveling so long my body didn't really know what time it thought it was. I was tired and ready to sleep, but my temperature schedule was off - so I was running cold in the afternoon/evenings and then my body temperature would climb some time after midnight. This continued for a while.
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The next morning (11-11) we went on a mission to get our permits and other stuff for the trek. This involved a walk to the ministry of tourism and filling out forms, getting pictures taken, and paying fees. On the way back we detoured to a nice cheap momo place. It wasn't very quick because this day it was just one cook, but they were cheap and tasty. Then we tried to get plane tickets but they were all sold out until Monday (this was Friday) DOH. There were plenty in the morning as far as we could tell, so we blew that one although it would have been even worse to have plane tickets but no permits for the trek. That would make our trekking even shorter on time but give us a bit more time around Kathmandu to eat momos and take photos.
11-12 We went to the Big Buddha Stupa to check it out and take pics. The light was pretty harsh and they were still doing some renovation / construction on it but it was cool to see. There were also heaps of prayer wheels including some the size of a car and lots of ghee lamps - the ghee came in giant yellow tubs. On the way back we stopped off at a fancy hotel where Sam and Raquel had a dinner on their tour. They let us walk around and take some pics in there too. Then it was time for more momos.
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11-13 we pack up for the trek and leave a bunch of stuff in Kathmandu at the New Orleans. This saved us a lot of grief since we had a tiny weight allowance on the flight and surely didn't want to lug all that stuff around with us on the trek. I borrowed Sam's backpack and it was pretty overloaded as it was. The Aarn pack would have been nice for this trek. We had more momos - I ordered 2 dinners this time... We moved to a transit hotel right by the airport so we could just walk over in the morning. This was ok except the building was pretty noisy - lots of doors and footsteps and plumbing noises.
11-14 We got up early and prepared to go. We also started taking Acetazolomide - AKA Diamox. This is supposed to help you excrete HCO3 to decrease some of the symptoms of altitude. Since we were planning to go up to about 18,000 ft in just a few days it seemed to be a wise precaution. One of the side effects was tingling body parts - mainly fingers but other things too, especially when they were cold and then warmed up. It also might have led to having to get up to go to the bathroom even more in the night - but that could have just been from drinking a lot of water and having long nights. It got foggy this morning to the point where when we had to go from the international terminal to the domestic one we couldn't even see where we were going. Sadly this also meant our flight was delayed. For a long time. Finally we were bussed out to the tarmac and waited some more before boarding the little plane (twin otter?) It had 3 seats across and had a high wing. I got a window seat on the left side in the hopes of seeing mountains. The window was pretty dirty though.
Once in the air we headed SE towards Lukla, the sketchiest airport in the world according to the Discovery Channel or something like that. We flew fairly low over some steep terraced hillsides with the hoped for big mountains off in the distance. I recognized Everest, but not much else. Then we were heading straight into the side of the mountain and pulled up onto the steeply sloped runway and came to a halt before the stone wall at the end. The plane taxied to the pad where they perform a really fast turn around before the plane lines up at the top of the runway and throttles up to full while holding the brakes and then tipping over the edge to rush down the ramp to hopefully take off before going over the cliff at the bottom.
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Basically we hadn't had any food this day and it was after noon, so we stopped at the first place for some. It was about 3 by the time we actually got trekking. This means we didn't make it as far as we wanted to (up to a higher elevation to start the acclimitization process properly). We stopped in Phakding where the Kalapathar Lodge guest house guy said we'd get free rooms if we ate there (this often was the case). They had free (although slow) wifi and my room had an outlet plug in it too, so we were able to recharge everything up. As soon as the sun went away and we stopped hiking it got cold. I was glad to have my suffer suit (Mont-Bell puffy tops and bottoms) as well as my big down puffy jacket. The 20 degree sleeping bag was not excessive either even if it did take up more space than the woefully inadequate one I was originally going to bring.
11-15 There was a very bright full moon although it was only really visible in the middle of the night. We got a pretty early start. I tried the tsampa - some sort of buckwheat or something porridge - ok, but a bit runny and I'd have probably made 3x that much on my own. We checked into the park at Monjo and then had a pretty substantial lunch after that. I ordered 2 meals and stuck the extra momos into my tupperware. There was a bit of confusion over the prices since I thought they said a lower price (as did Raquel). Oh well, it was about 1$ difference for a lot of food. One advantage of Dal Bhat (or however that is spelled) is that they usually came by with a reload of rice and Dal and sometimes curry too. It was one meal that could usually be relied on to fill me up - which is no mean feat. A bit later we left the river and crossed a high cable bridge and then started uphill in earnest. We gained about 2,000 feet up to Namche Bazar. There they were working on rebuilding their hydro powered prayer wheels. I am not convinced that having the water spin a wheel makes it pray, but they look cool. We got here with a bit of extra time so I walked around taking some pics before dinner. Once again as soon as the sun went behind the mountains the temperature plummeted.
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11-16 Based on Brandon's suggestion we decided to detour to Tengboche Monastary to go to the Mani Rimdu festival. First we traversed along a crowded trail with some nice views of Everest and Ama Dablam before dropping way down to the river and then back up again to Tengboche. We got there about noon and someone quick rushed us into the monastary courtyard for the dances. This meant no lunch. It would have been nice to have an interpreter or guide to tell us what was going on in the dances, but they were colorful with fancy clothes and masks and huge blatting vuvuzelas and so on. Then a character in a mask came out and grabbed Raquel and paraded her around and made her do various things that she had no idea what was going on - mixing tsampa and so on... Once again a guide could have helped here. I took lots of pics and later Brandon said that was Mi-Tsering (long life man) - and getting grabbed was auspicious. Part auspicious and part comic relief? She probably only understood a quarter of what he was miming and none of what he was saying. Then they took Raquel backstage into the monastary and gave her some food and milk tea. By the end of this we were pretty cold and I put on all my insulation (we were on the shady side). There were more dances and people handed out food (fried things, candy, and apples). Some were fresher and better than others. There was some sour rice pudding too. Then another long skit with a tourist guy with a fake camera and guitar and a couple (both played by guys) with a baby that eventually died... (it was hard to really tell what was going on). We left when it looked like it was going to end but then started up again. We were cold and hungry. We went to a lodge that had no empty rooms but said we could sleep in the dining room. After dinner I took a few night pics and saw that there were just a few people in the monastary singing and dancing (evidently later it picked up a lot more steam). Then we waited for enough people to leave the dining room so we could go to bed. It was nice and warm when we went to bed but I think the temperature dropped to about freezing over the night (indoors).
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11-17 We had to get up when everyone else did since we were in the dining room, but it wasn't super early. After breakfast we got caught behind the rush paying before heading off down a more obscure trail towards Phortse - as usual this meant we dropped way down to a river and then climbed way back up the other side. I saw some pheasanty sorts of birds in the forest on the descent. In Phortse we found the under construction Khumbu Climbing Center (that Brandon is working on) and spent a good bit of time watching the impressive loads of rocks and block carving and placing. For lunch we had what was probably the best Dal Bhat I experienced before saying goodbye and once again dropping down to a river (more pheasanty birds) and then back up to the trail to Gokyo. We saw a few musk deer (3), although I only saw 2. It was pretty dark but I managed some ok pics of one. They are strange little vampire deer with fangs.
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We stopped at Dole (or Dhole) for the night. Once again we would have liked to get a bit higher, but it was getting cold and we didn't know how big the next spot on the map was. For dinner I tried the Sherpa stew. It was a veggie stew with potatoes and thick noodles. I could have eaten 3 bowls. As we ascended away from Lukla the prices for food and other things went up. This made some sense since almost everything had to be carried up there by a porter or a yak or a helicopter and in some ways you were paying for your room by buying food. Still the prices didn't always make sense to me - for instance a coke cost about the same as a bowl of cooked rice despite the substantial difference in transportation effort required. That night was particularly cold. The windows were rattling and there was a substantial draft. In the morning I discovered my window was open a few inches - that surely didn't help.
11-18 We headed on up the hill with a stop in Macchermo for an early lunch. We took a bunch of pics by the numerous rock cairns and glacial blue waters of some of the Gokyo Lakes before making it to within sight of Gokyo (4880 M) before we lost the sun (we spent too much time taking pics to keep it). We saw the guide from Sam and Raquel's previous trip here. He was leading some people up to Gokyo. We were hoping to find a reasonable room with an electric outlet, but that didn't really happen. That night was cold. Ice on the bathroom floor cold. The plan was to climb Gokyo Ri and then head out over Renjo La pass (that might be redundant since I think "La" means pass) the next day.
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11-19 I got up early as was the plan, unfortunately I could hear Sam throwing up in the next room. So much for plans. He was feeling pretty miserable with no energy and stomach issues. Altitude might have been part of the problem but there was definitely something unhappy in the GI tract. We decided to move to a warmer room with a hot shower. We moved over to the Fitzroy. Our room had the stove pipe running through it so that provided a little extra heat. Meanwhile I went out in the morning to take some pics. Sam and Raquel found the sunniest corner of the dining room to inhabit.
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Once it became clear Sam wasn't going to have a miraculous recovery I powered up Gokyo Ri at 5350 M or so. I felt pretty strong going up and although I wasn't all that fast, I wasn't that slow either. It took about 1.5 hours to get up from the lake. I was doing one full breath in and out per step. I spent quite a bit of time up top taking pics of the spectacular vistas. Everest et al. were off to the E and Cho Oyu was to the N. Gokyo Ri was a bit of a sub-peak to a slightly higher peak but I couldn't muster the energy to drop down and scramble up the higher one. Oh well. There was also a good view of the largest glacier in Nepal (the Ngozumba Glacier). The lakes are at least partly dammed up by the massive lateral morraine. You can see how much smaller the glacier is now compared to when it was building that morraine. The descent back down to Gokyo went fairly quickly. Then I took a rather disappointing luke-warm trickle shower. At least I got cleanish for the first time in a while but it took a long time to warm up after this. It turns out they have a water jacket on the stove in the dining room and once they fired that up there was copious hot water. Oh well. That night we were much warmer as well as able to charge most of our batteries as the power in the outlets went on and off.
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11-20 As Sam wasn't fully recovered and we had lost a day we opted to return on the same trail to Namche Bazar instead of taking the pass. We didn't get a particularly early start and the longish lunch in Dole didn't help our pace but it was still a long tiring day with a lot of elevation gain and much more elevation loss. We took a "shortcut" which bypassed the turnoff to the shortest path to Namche and went up through Khumjung and over the hill that way and dropped nearly straight down into Namche just as it was getting truly dark. We stayed at the place we stayed on the way up. This time in a room with a 3 person bed (we were skeptical but followed the woman - it turned out that she meant 3 singles in one room).
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11-21 Sam and Raquel were flying out of Lukla the next morning so they needed to hike there this day. I on the other hand had more time so I was going to head up high again on my way towards Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar.
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This story continues here : Nepal part 2