Sam and Raquel didn't have a lot of time so we planned to head up to Gokyo and back. We took a detour to check out the Mani Rimdu festival at Tengboche and visit Brandon and the Khumbu Climbing Center in Phortse and then up to Dole and Gokyo. There Sam took ill (I woke up to the sound of him puking in the next room). So I climbed up Gokyo Ri alone (with plenty of others) while Raquel watched him. We spent another night in Gokyo and returned to Namche down the valley rather than up over Renjo La to a different valley for the return.
In Namche I said goodbye and they headed back to go to Thailand. I continued up past Tengboche to Somare where I really bonked. I ran out of energy and my stomach had not been processing food all day. I curled up in all my clothes in my sleeping bag under blankets trying to warm up. When I got up I puked. Ugh. The next day I slowly moved up to Lobuche and the next day to Gorak Shep. From there I hiked up Kala Patthar for sunset pics of Everest and others and then the next day went to pseudo Everest base camp on the Khumbu Glacier. By doing Kala Patthar the day I got there I freed up a day so after another night in Lobuche I went over Kongma La on the return and then to Dingboche and back to Lukla. My appetite came back in Tengboche. In Monjo I was woken up by an early morning earthquake (turned out to be a nearby 5.5 or 5.6).
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| looking down from near Kongma La on a lake with Makalu in the distance and Lhotse on the left |
Back in Kathmandu I was looking forward to a hot shower, but the hotel didn't have hot hot water until that evening. DOH. at least there was plentiful food to slake my returning appetite.
As usual someday I hope to get a trip report up on the trekking complete with some of the 100s of GB of photos I have taken. I'm pretty sure there are a few good ones in there somewhere.
I managed to survive a fair bit of walking up to over 18,000 ft (5600 M or so is the highest I got). There sure are a lot of spectacular mountains there as well as hardy Sherpas carrying huge loads on their backs and Yaks and musk deer and blue lakes and big glaciers and so on.
After another day here in KTM it is on to Thailand and hopefully climbing down by Tonsai.
I have a trip report up for the first part of my travels in Nepal....
http://www.electricant.net/grundyman/nepal2016a.html
