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Last view of Everest
The same spot as our first view but a bit clearer. Phakding, Nepal
Altitude at start of day: 3,440 meters / 11,284 feet “Good sleep?” This is the way every morning's first conversation with Ram goes. Dave will agree. I'll usually say good enough but not much sleep. Last night was more of the same - another night of quantity over quality.
Before that, Hari will appear at our door, often times while we're still in bed or have just gotten up and started packing. “Good morning sirs! You have bags for me?” “Not yet, Hari. Ten minutes.” “Okay.” In five minutes he'll come back to check on us. Of course we're still not ready. We need the ten minutes to get everything packed away from the night before. Today, we finally had everything together in time for him. He was so excited.
I went into the bathroom and washed one pair of my smelly socks. Hopefully they'll dry in the sun today so I can finally not have to wear nasty socks. Dave opted to keep using a well-worn pair.
After breakfast and a brief stop at some Namche stores, we left Namche. The morning trek was almost all downhill on terrain that was either a
Relaxing
Taking one of several breaks. very dusty dirt path or on steps. Fortunately it wasn't terribly difficult or as hard on the knees as we had expected. About 20 minutes in we got our last glimpse of Everest far off in the distance. It wasn't long ago that we were at its base.
We stopped for lunch at the same place as before. Dave had pizza and I had an egg cheese
sandwish with fries and veggies and a
leamon tea. We have had a lot of fun with the various typos on the menus.
Leamon is my favorite. Dave seems to be convinced leamon is some rare and alternative form of living matter, like an animal or plant.
As we finished lunch, it began to drizzle a bit. We put on our raincoats and I covered my pack before we set out. It drizzled for a few minutes but never turned into anything heavy.
We left Sagarmatha National Park just after lunch and got our TIMS cards to keep as souvenirs. Fortunately these didn't need to be used for rescue purposes.
The up and down terrain wound us through various woodlands and along the river, crossing it several times. As
Lunch
Dave and Hari at our lunch spot. the afternoon progressed, it grew a bit cooler before we made it to Phakding by 2:30.
Here, we also had the same room as before. This was the last place where we had free electric, though the outlet had since been busted as someone appears to have tried to fit a square peg in a round hole. At least it still worked.
We settled in, one of our first tasks being to utilize the window to air out our socks and continue drying my clean ones. With the lack of sun, they didn't dry well. Dave kept his in the aptly named
bag of socks which now holds one of the most putrid odors known to man.
While Dave read and used the Internet downstairs, I spent the afternoon catching up some more on my journal entries, before joining him downstairs to read and use the Internet. We also had our dinner - more noodles and momos with an apple pie treat for dessert.
As usual, after dinner we went over our morning breakfast and departure times with Ram. He suggested 8:30. When we got back to the room, Dave questioned this. “Why can't we leave
No smiles
We haven't finished our task just yet. later and sleep in? We always get there super early and all we do in the afternoons is read and fart at each other like
Terrence and Philip.” All I could do is laugh at the
Terrence and Philip comment.
We were in bed by 8:30 in preparation for our last day of trekking.
Altitude at end of day: 2,800 meters / 9,184 feet
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