Day #9 - Tengboche - a daily ritual

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Returning back to my lodge, the porters have delivered my blue holdall with the rest of my gear in it. The porters deliver my holdall into my room, and the key is handed to me by one of the guides. This marks the start of the daily ritual which is called "filling the time between the end of the days trek and going to bed". I have a routine now which for this period which is more or less the same on most days now and goes something like:

1. Unroll my sleeping back.

2. Unwrap my warm "evening wear".

3. Remove all warm trekking gear and wrap up all my electrical gear into it (too keep batteries from discharging in cold mostly). Change into "evening wear"

4. Put the above bundle of warm trekkin gear and electrical gear in a waterproof exped sack and drop into the foot of my sleeping bag.

5. Take all my empty waterbottles to the guides for filling up with safe and drinkable hot water.

6. Have dinner, chat to fellow trekkers in and out of the group I am travelling with. Maybe a card game, read my book or update my journal.

7. Guides return the waterbottles now hot, and these I place in my sleeping bag, with the larger ones at the foot to keep my clothes for the next day and electrical equipment warm during the night.

8. Go to bed around 8pm, ready for a wake up call and "washy washy" bowl from the guides typically around 7am the next day.

There is a lot of downtime to fill on this trip, and whilst there is a temptation to go to bed straight after dinner around 7pm, all this ends up doing is leaving you aware at 4am the next day - when there is even less to do, and it is much colder.

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