Stone and Wood in the Himalaya
Dateline: April 11th, 2010
Barring any major flight delays today will be my last full day in the Solukhumbu. Tomorrow, I should be back in Kathmandu, a day earlier than planned. This comes courtesy of powering through a seven-hour hike from Namche Bazaar straight through to Lukla.
I didn't get to bed until past 2200 last night, but was awake by 0630 this morning. (After over two weeks trekking, I'm starting to wonder what it will feel like when nine hours of sack time no longer qualifies as an inadequate night's sleep.) I'd packed everything except my trekking clothes and morning toiletries the night before so I was able to have a thirty-minute vegetative lie-in before stumbling downstairs for breakfast.
By 0800, we filed past the checkpoint at the foot of Namche and headed towards the Dudh Kosi and the valley floor. Before setting out, this descent – six-hundred vertical metres down those ridiculous switchbacks – was the part of the day about which I'd been most nervous. In fact I'd been concerned about the descent ever since we had to climb this section back on Day 2. But my nervousness this day was exacerbated by my now injured toe and increasingly wonky knees.
It turns out that I needn't have fretted so much. The descent took a scant forty-five minutes and I jogged down large sections to keep pressure off my knees. I'd opted to ditch my hiking boots and trek in my cross-trainers so my toe had plenty of wiggle room.
After reaching the Dudh Kosi it was just a matter of retracing our steps past the checkpoint at Monjo and back through all the small villages and settlements. We stopped off for some local Nepali bread and samosas around 1000 and hiked into Phakding a little before 1130. At the start of the day, I told Santosh I was reserving the option to stop and overnight in Phakding, depending on how my lower body held up during the descent. As I sat down to lunch my left leg was stiff but otherwise I was fine. After an hour, we pushed on.
About a half-hour later, as we hiked through the village of Chhuthawa, it occurred to me that we hadn't seen any six-hundred pound man heaving his way up the trail. I would have felt more self-satisfied in my ability to sniff out bullshit stories if this hadn't been such an obviously bullshit story. While people don't have to peak physical specimens to trek in the Himalaya – we've seen more than one senior-citizen Japanese group; and a not insignificant number of heftier, stockier trekkers – the thought of somebody so grossly obese heading towards Everest Base Camp was just too bloody much. I was just surprised to hear so many people repeating the same stupid yarn.
Then, two minutes later, I spotted a guy who must have been well over three-hundred pounds. And carrying that body weight on a five-foot-nine-inch-tall frame. Maybe these stories start off with the tiniest kernel of truth. Or maybe it really was all bullshit and this was nothing more than a gigantic coincidence.
Thank You, I Did Have My Nice Trek
We trudged through the gate at Lukla a little past 1500. All in all the trekking totalled five-and-a-half hours with an hour-and-a-half scattered in rest breaks. Not bad for a guy who looks like he has a quite a few millilitres of blood pooled under his big toe.
After dropping my stuff off at the Tara Lodge – where I had breakfast way back on Day 1 – we went out into the village, stopping off at the room that Arun shares with other porters whenever they're not out on a trek. I sat down with them and had a plate of momos, chased down with my first taste of raksi (the local firewater brewed from milled millet). The momos were tasty. Raksi is disgusting. Sherpas (and I'm talking about the ethnic group rather than generic term for porters and guides) drink this stuff like it's going out of style but I guess in the mountains it's any port in a storm.
Unfortunately, There's No Escaping Starbucks
After that we had a wander around Lukla. Despite a nice selection of bars, I didn't feel much like celebrating the end of the trek. I'm just two damn exhausted and the straight shot of raksi I'd had was starting to cloud my mind. I did have a beer with Arun and Santosh, and stopped off for a bit to chat with a few familiar faces from the trail, but it was back to lodge for dinner by around 1830.
Trekking – Day 16
I'm slowly adjusting to the fact that, in less than twenty-four hours, I'll be out of the mountains and back to the craziness that is Kathmandu. Even after sixteen days, it's still not a change I'm wholeheartedly prepared to make. Life is simpler up here. The air is cleaner. There's less of it, but the body has adjusted and I'm breathing easier. I could have easily chilled out in Namche for a week.
Tomorrow I'll be contending with noise, smog, tiger-balm salesmen and glue-sniffing kids. I'll be dodging motorcycles, rickshaws and cars on streets where even the locals haven't figured out the rules. But it won't be all bad. I'll have access to (intermittent) electricity again. I'll have my choice of cheap Internet cafés and free WiFi connections. I'll get a room with a shower. Best yet, I'll have my pickings of copious varieties of non-daal-bhat sustenance. I'm been dreaming about a wood-fired pizza from the Roadhouse Café or Fire and Ice for days.
The Lower Dudh Kosi
Altitude Stats:
- Starting Altitude: 3,365m
- Ending Altitude: 2,785m
- Maximum Altitude: 3,365m
- Minimum Altitude: 2,495m
- Total Ascent: 560m
- Total Descent: 1,145m
Related Entries:
1. Trekking in the Solukhumbu - Day 15: Steak, Apple Pie, and Funny Things in the Sky
2. Trekking in the Solukhumbu - Day 14: Back to Namche
3. Trekking in the Solukhumbu - Day 13: Starting the Descent
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