Day 15 – Homeward bound

A visit to the Indian Airlines office in the morning saw us get our tickets to Bangalore confirmed for the afternoon’s flight, but not before experiencing typical babudom in a very amusing office.
We visited Boudhanath Stupa before lunch at the Rum Doodle again, this time with Bishnu. We nailed up our own Yeti footprint in [...]

Day14 – Phakding to Kathmandu !

We woke at 5 am and started what was supposed to be a 2.5 hour trek to Lukla in time to catch the first of the flights back to Kathmandu. We left Phakding at 6 am and reached Lukla at 8:15 am, making excellent time. It turned out that weather was bad at the time, [...]

Day13 – Phakding again

The climb down from Namche to Phakding saw us cross the 5 bridges again and we wondered how on earth we had managed to do the steep climb up to Namche.
We reached Phakding at 3pm and managed to avoid a heavy downpour that began 20 minutes after we reached. We had debated [...]

Day12 – Pushing on to Namche

The normal itinerary was to trek from Dingboche to Tyangboche or nearabouts but we decided to head all the way back to Namche since it meant good food, nice place to stay and generally a good environment. We preferred the hard push of a long trek rather than the cold and dreary lodges of Tyangboche.
After [...]

Day11 – Kala Patthar

Thanks to my cold, I didnt sleep a wink and was awake when Brigadier Bishnu came to wake us at 4:45 am. After a cup of coffee, we started the trek up Kala Patthar (5545 m). It was still dark and we used torches to find out way up the trail. Twice before the halfway [...]

Day10 – Trek to Gorakshep

We left cold Lobuche behind and trekked along the Khumbu glacier to Gorakshep (5140m) , getting views of Nuptse, Everest, Pumo Ri and others giants like Lho La on the way. The Buddha lodge at Gorakshep was luxury compared to the other spartan places we encountered before and we lazed in its sun room, warming [...]

Day9 – The Lobuche Light Infantry

Kersi uncle had almost talked us into joining them at an early start of 7 am, but we managed to squirm out of that and started at a more decent time of 8:30 am. The day’s trek was to take us along the hills above Dingboche past Pheriche in the valley below, to the village [...]

Day8 – Rest day at Dingboche

Waking up leisurely at 9 am, we declined to take the optional day trek to Chukung, which would have been an acclimatization trek, opting instead to climb the hills above the lodge. We were back by noon and had a nice hot shower and then daal bhaat for lunch.
The desi gang trooped back from Chukung [...]

Day7 – Ding Dingboche

An 8 am start saw us rid off Papa’s House and a nice downhill from Tyangboche. This same downhill was to kill me later on the return journey when it became an awful uphill climb. On the way we spotted a FOB (Fresh Off the Boat a.k.a. NRI) couple who turned out to be from [...]

Day6 – Papa’s house in Tyangboche

Starting at 9 am, we walked around the hills opposite Thamserku with clouds obscuring Everest and Lhotse from view. We descended to the valley below and had a lunch of daal bhaat before crossing the Dudh Kosi again to begin a very steep ascent up a hill to Tyangboche (3860 m), reaching around 3 pm [...]