I slept 10 hours last night; the best of the entire trek so far. I invented a 'cure' for my condition.[1] I reasoned that if my body wasn't detecting CO2 in my body, I needed to create some, so slept with a scarf over my face and my face half inside my sleeping bag. Magic! If it weren’t for the Diamox, the altitude sickness preventive that is also a diuretic (meaning trips to the loo in the night), I would have recorded 10 hours unbroken.
We woke to a threatening day. Instead if the clear air we were accustomed to, visibility was lowering and a niggling wind was blowing from the South and wild clouds were worrying the lower peaks. The upper peaks were obscured.
The trek began with a sharp ascent from Namche, then a long stretch of comparatively level, wide and beautifully maintained track. We soon discovered why: a local Sherpa had generously taken on the 'public duty' of creating and maintaining a good trail and set up a post on the route advertising this and collecting donations.
An easy walk for 2 and 1/2 hours followed, losing height for lunch near the suspension bridge at Punkli Tenga. Large numbers of trekkers were gathering for the assault on Tengboche. Gopal warned us that Tengboche would be crowded and noisy so we set our destination as Deboche, 30 minutes beyond the top of the ridge, which would also give us a head start in the morning.
Lunch by now is a rest-and-recuperate event, an hour of respite from effort. Hot soup, hot lemon and honey, half a litre of water and a few minutes’ nap if you can manage it.
As we lunched it started to snow, little dry kibbles at first, with flakes getting bigger and wetter as we ascended. We faced another 600 m hard climb in 2 km which we handled with ease, but getting colder and wetter. By the time we reached the stupa and monastery that dominates the settlement of Tengboche, the snow was sticking to the juniper, pine and copper beech and carpeting the ground, smoothing the rough cobbles and creating a bright winter scene. Most hikers called it a day here but we pressed on, putting off visiting the fabled monastery until our return when hopefully the timing and weather will be in our favour.
A sharp descent through a winter landscape brought us to the Ama Dablam Lodge in Deboche. I had the strong feeling that the head start we had gained by walking to on Deboche had been at the expense of comfort in Tengboche. Sure enough, this lodge is rudimentary and absolutely freezing. After huddling around feeble heat of the yak dung stove in the dining room, we had a hot drink, dinner and went straight to bed.
A Diversion on Lodges:
Lodge setups in Nepal defy reasonable explanation. Designed to service the trekker traffic, they consist of stone buildings with rough pine or plywood interiors. Their open door policy is literal: the front door is wide open and the interior is largely unheated. Today, for the first time the dining room of a lodge had a pot bellied stove fired by yak dung and even then, due to the open doors and drafts through the rough window frames, the interior temperature was barely above the temperature outside.
Huge, steep stairs take you to the bedrooms upstairs. Protected by a roughly fitting door with an unwieldy padlock, the bedroom reveals one to three hard plywood beds with a thin foam mattress covered by a sheet and a hard, pillow that smells of wet dogs. There is little hanging space so you make use of nails and wood splinters to hang your sweat-soaked clothing and change into a dry set, roll out your sleeping bag and slip in, hoping to warm up and hopefully nap.
However, everything is wooden and trekkers in boots on dead legs stamp up the stairs and along the corridors, clattering locks, squeaking hinges, dropping backpacks and talking in booming voices. The toilets are shared and are universally squalid. They are squat- or broken Western versions, invariably surrounded by puddles of unclassifiable liquid, leaking plumbing and a deep flush bucket with a grimy handled jug floating in it. There're few hand basins or mirrors.
As for showers, "Hot Shower" is often signed, but in 11 days so far I have only found one that worked, and have resorted to a bucket shower, cold water sluice down or more frequently I use my own "4-Baby Wipe" full body wash method[2]. In a crisis they say personal hygiene is the first to go. Here's the proof!
[1] The "cure" didn't work again and I was troubled by Cheyne-Stokes respiration difficulties, sleeping very poorly for the next week.
[2] Contact me for gory detailsJ!
