Advertisement
Day 6 - Goyem to Junbesi The storm finished at first light, just after 5 am. Neither of us slept particularly well and so we had a couple of hours extra in bed and finally left Goyam around 9. The cloud was still hanging around and it made the morning pretty cold, we reached the pass over the mountain ridge at around 11am and had our first glimpses of the peaks of the Himalayas. The snowy peaks poking over the cloudline to give us a view of what was to come.
Coming down the ridge we passed through thick forest, and eventually found a place to have lunch. Our Dutch friend, Gert, was already there and we decided after lunch that we'd all walk down to Junbesi together, though he's normally a bit slower than us, he kept up pretty well until his garlic soup turned nasty in his stomach and he dived into some bushes. A little later he caught up with us and told how he normally kept his sphinctre pretty tight.
I wondered at this point, at what level of language proficiency do you learn the word for sphinctre?
An hour later we saw Junbesi, a large village below us in the valley and we settled on a guest house there, it's a fairly lively town with a school set up by Sir Edmund Hillary and even a tourist centre. There is a large Buddhist Monastery an hour or so north that we will visit tomorrow.
Day 7 - Junbesi We decided rest day was in order and as our lodge had a sit down toilet I was convinced. We took a short trip up to the local Buddhist monastery where over 1,000 monks and nuns live. We were allowed to watch the meditation, and Rhian met with the nuns making candles. One nun was really interested in the colour of Rhian's skin and kept feling it, showing her how soft it was in comparison to her own.
We're pretty sure we saw Gert meditating there, but we've not seen him since.
Day 8 - Junbesi to Nunthala Another early start as we headed out at 6.30. Th next three days are going to be quite tough long days as we have to get to Namche (the main hub) in a few days if we're to get up to EBC and back before our visas expire.
The first two hours were an uphill climb until we reached a town called Phurtyang. As we rounded the bend, a spectacular view of the Himalayas greeted us. And this was the first time we saw Everest, it was tucked away in one corner, and looked smaller than some of the other mountains as they were closer, but it was still awe inspiring. For the next two hours we bounced along with adrenalin.
There was a dip in the track and then a further climb, and then another dip and climb, but we arrived in Nunthala at about 3.30, just before the thunder.
Day 9 - Nunthala to Puiyan/Chutok Leaving at 6.15am we had to go down about 500m to cross the Dudh Kosi (a river deep in the valley) before we could climb again. The weather was miserable all day, with rain coming down in patches, though never quite enough to justify how hot we were getting in our rain jackets.
We got to a village called Bupsa by lunchtime, and stopped for some Thukpa ( a kind of soup with Spinach and Spaghetti in it. Bupsa is a small village perched precariously on a mountain ridge, we knew we still had quite a climb ahead of us, but had no idea how long it would actually take. We eventually mad it over the pass at 2,900metres, only to see when climbing over it that there was a further ridge, higher still that we had to climb. At one point we were nearly knocked over by a caravan of donkeys! The stink they are leaving on the trails is becoming a real issue! The poo is one thing, but the pee is something else!
Once over the pass it took forever for the trail to drop, but eventually at 5.45, eleven and a half hours after leaving, we arrived in Puiyan.
Puiyan is the Sherpa name for the village, these are the people who originate from Tibet and made up most of the Gurkha regiment of the British army, a fact thy are fiercely proud of. The higher you go in the mountains the more you notice that the people look Chinese as opposed to t more Indian looking people in the capital. As Buddhists, they tend to be extremely friendly and welcoming too. Rhian was placed in the most important seat in a Sherpa household (right in front of the fire) while the mama of the home helped her to dry her hair.
Day 10 - Puiyan to Lukla It's not been a great day. Neither of us slept well and as a result we didn't leave until 8.30 We had wanted to set off much earlier and maintain our altitude along the track before heading over the 3,000metre mark again tomorrow.
As it was, half an hour into the walk, my stomach starting cramping up and it was becoming painful to move, sit or breathe! We carried on for another half an hour at which point my cheese omelette turned out to be something of a bad egg. In the worst place possible, with no trees or rocks to hide behind, I had to rid myself of something more yellow and more loose than the Watford defence.
Stopping mid flow for a group of porters and more donkeys, I said a quick Namaste and finished things off. Finally, I got some revenge on t donkeys.
We decided that the day was going to be a right off and we should take a side trip to Lukla, which is as high as we were likely to get. Lukla is where the airport is for tourists on the group treks, though you're far more likely to get altitude sickness by starting here, but it's a busy little town and caters well for the tourists.
Finally some decent food and we actually got a room with it's own bathroom for about GBP4.00, though the shower consisted of two thermos flasks and a bucket!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.147s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0637s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb