To the Bottom of the Top of the World! (Part 1)

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Our 11:00 pm train leaving Varanasi arrived an hour and a half late, giving us what we thought would be the last annoyance that the country of India would have to offer.  We got in our "first class" berth that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in 5 years or so, and settled in for our overnight train ride to the India/Nepal border.  We arrived at around 6:00 am to the border town, and along with another couple of backpackers paid a taxi jeep to get to the Nepalese border.  The driver told us to wait 10 minutes, and in that time he managed to find another 4 people to stuff into the jeep.  It was not a comfortable ride.  After a bumpy 2 hour drive, and a promise to drop us off right at the border, the driver let us off in some random alley with no sight of the border to Nepal.  That was officially the last annoying thing that happened to us in India.  After finding the border and getting our tourist visas issued, we found Nepal to be an instant breath of fresh (but dusty) air.  People seemed to be nicer, and wanted to rip us off less than in India.  People still spit and horked on the streets, but at least the public urination was kept to a minimum.

We immediately got onto a mini-bus headed for Kathmandu, and enjoyed the bendy 7 hour drive through the beautiful mountains.  We met a local girl on the bus, who was nice enough to offer us a ride from the bus station to the area where our hostel was located.  The hostel/hotel was definitely a budget place, but turned out to be quite comfortable, and we spent the next 6 days enjoying the city, visiting the hundreds of mountaineering shops, and trying to figure out what was the best way to get up to Mt. Everest base camp!

We had met a nice and very energetic Aussie guy named Alex whom we decided to team up with for the trek, and he, with taxi, picked us up at 5:30 am from our hostel to catch our 6:30 flight to Lukla.  The flight into Lukla (our 10 day starting point of the trek), we had learned, was literally the most dangerous flight in the world, as it could only be made with a small plane (12 people), through the mountains, landing on a tiny little runway on a mountainside.  For those interested, google "Lukla Airport" for a better look.

We were lucky enough to actually leave that morning, as we had been informed that due to the fact it was monsoon season, flights had been known to be cancelled for up to one week.  The flight itself was beautiful, with lush green mountains all around, and high snowy peaks off in the distance.  We learned that a few people didn't even plan on getting off the plane, and just paid for the flight for the scenery itself.  As we saw the tiny strip of runway approaching, everybody on the plane held their breath until we had safely touched down, and clapped/cheered as the plane came to a stop only a few feet from the fence at the end of the runway.

We met the porter, Senji, we had hired, in the tiny building that was the Lukla Airport, and he brought us to a local café where we had breakfast and prepared for the first day of our hike.  As we only had hired one porter for the three of us, we decided that we would take turns letting him carry our packs (Alice and Dave packed together in one).  When we left the café, Alex tried to give his pack to Senji for the first leg of the journey.  Senji looked shocked and in broken English said "I am no porter, I am guide only and if you want porter you must pay extra".  This, naturally, was a shock to us as well, as this was not what we had agreed to with Senji's boss in Kathmandu.  We decided we would carry our own packs for the time being, and Senji said he would call his boss at the end of the day.  We were feeling India creep back up on us at that point.


The first three hours of the hike were pretty easy.  A little up, a little down, but we were excited and on fresh legs.  The altitude of Lukla was 2840 m, and our destination, Phakding, was 2610 m, so we essentially walked downhill until lunch. Because it was low season for trekking the paths were almost completely empty and were able to really enjoy the realness of the mountains. We passes many local Nepali people along the way preparing for the farming season, kids playing in the villages, mothers bathing their children in little basins outside. One of the things we loved the most was having the village dogs all to ourselves. They seemed to live for following trekkers up to the next town and back. On our very first day one of the dogs we named "Goldie" followed us for 4 hours!






At lunch we met up with a girl, Kat, who we had met in Kathmandu and decided that we would hike together with her and her guide.  It took a little convincing, though, as her creepy guide appeared to want Kat all to himself.  We decided that, although we were supposed to stay in Phakding for the night, we would carry on a little as we still had energy and it was early in the day.

We kept on until we arrived in Monju at 2835 m, a 4 hour hike that we were told by Senji would only take 2 hours. Along the way the sky was beginning to cloud over and we were becoming more and more tired as it was only our first day out. When we arrived at our guesthouse, Senji seemed to be pretty friendly with the owners, and it made us wonder why he was so insistant that we make it to that particular place on our first day.  We were happy, however, that we had made it through the first day, and enjoyed a nice dinner in our guesthouse by the river. It turned out that Senji had "no cell reception", and was unable to reach his boss to discuss the porter situation.


We woke up early the next day, as it was going to be a long one.  Our destination was a town called Namche Bazar, and at an altitude of 3440 m, it was going to be a lot of uphill climbing. Of course we ported our own bags again, and decided to not make too big of a deal about it until we spoke to the boss in Kathmandu.  The hike was absolutely gorgeous along the way as we walked through the trees. We had to cross the river every once in a while as we ascended and the only way available was to pass through long, high up, hanging bridges. We eventually made it to Namche Bazar, which was a beautiful village in the hills, even though it was covered in fog, around 2:00 pm. We also managed to have another dog-hiker join the group, and we named her Peanut.  She even stuck around until the next morning outside our guesthouse.  We checked into our guesthouse, the "Comfort Inn", and ordered our lunch as we were starving at that point.  Despite the fact that it had the official Comfort Inn logo outside, we learnt quickly that this was a fake, notably because it took 2 hours to receive our lunch!

After we had some food in us though, the four of us were in good spirits and spent the rest of the day relaxing, reading, and waiting another hour and a half for dinner.  And wouldn't you know it, despite the fact that Namche Bazar was the most populated and well established town on the trek, Senji was still "unable" to reach his boss!

The next day was an "acclimitization day", as we needed to get used to the thinner air and altitude.  We woke up early, grabbed our homemade hiking poles (and Alex's brand made one) and took a tough 4:40 am hike up to the Mount Everest view point, the reason we woke up so early was that the fog was meant to be minimal in the morning.  As we hadn't eaten, and hiked up 200 m first thing in the morning, this turned out to be quite difficult.  So much so that Kat had to stop and throw up along the way.  We all made it, though, but unfortunately weren't lucky enough to have good enough weather to see Mt. Everest.  After walking around the view point museum and learning about the history of the Sherpa's (native Tibetans that were the first to occupy the mountainous region) we hiked back down and had breakfast.  An hour or two later, we went for our second "acclimatizing" hike of the day, to the "Everest View Lodge"; a posh 5 star hotel where we were told rich tourists would take a helicopter in and spend $500 to stay for the night.  It was another tough hike, but it had some great views, and we passed what we were told was the highest airport in the world (which was really just a grassy field with a shack beside it), before arriving at the lodge. The sun was gleaming the entire time we were making our way up, but just as we were making it out to the view point the clouds quickly covered the sky and unfortunately, once again, we were unable to see Mount Everest, and this would become a reoccurring theme.  We did, though, spend $10 for tea, and had a nice afternoon relaxing at the lodge.


We hiked back down to Namche Bazar, and at that point decided to take "porting matters" into our own hands.  We headed for the only internet café that was open, and made our own phone call to Sunji's boss.  Surprisingly enough, he was available on the first attempt!  We explained the situation, and he told us that there is no way Sunji should be asking for extra money, and that he would call him at once.  After we had taken care of that little piece of business, we ventured back to the "Comfort Inn", had dinner, and met Roger, a solo (with guide) hiker from the U.K. and Alex and Jacques from Quebec, all of whom would become regular fixtures in the days to come. We all played cards, got to know one another, and hit the sack at around 8:30 pm, which was perfectly normal in Nepal.

The next morning, after having breakfast, we waited for Sunji to mention that his boss had called him and informed him he would be carrying a bag from now on.  To no one's surprise, he didn't.  So we politely informed him that we had spoken to the boss, and that his job was to be our porter.  There were no more arguments after that point.  We set out around 8:30 a.m. for a day that was to be filled with lots of ups, lots of downs, a few scary bridges, beautiful scenery and then a huge uphill at the end of the day.











Along the way we met Jay and Ebba, from Sweden, who were going it alone without a porter or guide, and were very friendly and fun. It turned out to be a very hot day, and we made the mistake of having a huge lunch with rice and potatoes, which made the 3 hour uphill after lunch very difficult.  We also had to cross many high hanging bridges, which for those of you who do not remember, was especially difficult for Dave. At the end of it all, we had hiked for 9 hours, and by the time we got to Pangboche, 3800 m, we were all gassed. Kat almost couldn't even make it the whole way, and was complaining the rest of the night of stomach pains and other altitude sickness like symptoms. We decided to take it easy and

 

treat the gang to a movie, despite the fact that laptop charging fees were like $5.00/hour, in an effort to cheer Kat up. Even though it was starting to get very cold at night, and the air was getting noticeably thinner, we all fell asleep before the halfway mark, and we learned the next morning that the movie night did nothing to help Kat feel better.

Thanks for reading, keep following for more,
With love from halfway up the Himalayas,
D'Alice