Friday 2nd April 2010 - Orsho to Namche Bazaar
Another six hour walk awaits us today as we make our way to Namche. Our call this morning is at 06.30am, breakfast is served at 07.15am and we are out the door by 08.00am. We have our morning routines down to a fine art now, even packing the rucksack every morning has become easy. I do not care about separating clean and dirty clothes any more, only a few more days to put up with them anyway so in they go. I doubt there are many clean ones anyway. We know we have two uphill climbs ahead of us today, one is thirty minutes and the other sixty minutes. Group one while en route decide we will wait until we get to the top of the second, the sixty minute climb before we stop for lunch, that way we will only have an easy sixty minute walk left to get to Namche. Not ideal but we have all learned that a long uphill walk after lunch is way harder on a full stomach.
We make great progress but have to frequently stop due to Jopke and Yak trains passing us on narrow paths with full loads. The trail is very busy today as all the backlogged trekkers seems to be heading the one direction at the same time. We cant help but feel a little smug, its not malice but you do feel smug knowing what they have ahead of them before they get back to where we are now. Now my body feels weak and frail and I begin to wonder how I managed to get up here at all, it seems such a long walk back. The first thirty minute climb brought us back into Tengboche where we reminisced about our game of football against the monks. We took five here and then on the trail again. You can see it in us all that we want to get to Namche, get into the shower and use the internet as soon as possible. It has been a tough three or four days. If I am honest the second climb took a lot more effort than I had expected, it was very physically demanding and reminded me of our walk up to Namche on our second day of trekking. That same feeling of when is it going to end came back. Mercifully we get to the top of the hill where lunch was calling us. The last hour was great, a nice handy walk into Namche to finish off the day. We roll into Namche and the same lodge as before by 14.30pm. On a sad note I got to see Everest for the last time (for this trip at least) and made a vow that I would be back someday to finish the job.
I don't even wait for, lets be honest a badly needed shower but instead head straight for the internet cafe. I can hardly wait to tell them at home about my exploits over the last few days and what has happened since I last emailed them. I do hope they are proud of me at home, I do not think my words will do justice to just how hard it had been, no words can, it is something you have to experience for yourself to truly understand. The exhaustion, the pain, the lack of oxygen, lack of sleep, headaches, it makes you wonder why would you bother in the first place. It is fantastic to read emails from home and to send one to Laura and my family. I then get back to the lodge for the second most important task I have been looking forward to, a shower. It has been a week since I last showered properly and I must stink big time. Tonight after dinner we head into the Paradise Bar again to celebrate Scott turning thirty. We shoot some pool, have plenty of drinks and just generally unwind and have a laugh. Everybody comes to the pub tonight which is great, we haven't had much opportunity on this trip to be all together at once. We meet up with Yasir again in Namche, he was turned around in Lobuche by Prackash as he was really struggling with the altitude. It must have been hard to have to turn around one day from Base Camp but also good to see Prackash will not sacrifice safety.
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