Headache?

Hello again- back in Namche.

We had a marvelous trek to Thame (12, 200ft) and Arya (14,054 ft) along the valley of the Duhda Kosi river all on an incredible high alpine plateau. I arrived at 14, 000 complete with a headache. We were due to stay two nights in Arya before heading over the Renjo La pass which takes you above 17,000ft. We decided to alter our plans when my headache got worse instead of better in 24 hours. We decended back to Namche in one day ( 17 K with 3000 ft of decent). We are back in Namche resting, doing laundry and visiting with "family". Tomorrow we will head out to Tengboche and try a slower acclimitization process. We are still planning on doing the high passes- just in a anti-clockwise direction.

Today is our first day of sun. I am so excited to actually see the great mountains surrounding the Khumbu Valley. We are heading up to Khunde where I might get my first view of Everest.

The Road to Namche

Lindsay and I have been traveling for 10 days now. It is hard to believe we are a third the way through our trip. We decided not to fly to Lukla- most people begin their trek with a flight to Lukla which can precipitate problems with altitude- we chose to trek from Jiri via the old mountaineers route- the route used before the Lukla airport was installed. It was cool to walk in the steps of Sir Edmund Hillary! This route required eight days of trekking with one "rest" day thrown in at Junbesi. For our rest day we hiked up to the Thupten Choling Monestary- the largest with 400 Ani (nuns) and 100 monks. Our visit to the monestary was incredibly moving. Very, very calming and peaceful.

The trek followed a mostly easterly path which means traveling over a series of valleys with rivers that run North to South. This means that each day took us up over a pass and down into a valley to cross a river on a suspension bridge. Sometimes there were two passes and two valleys in one day! The trek below Lukla was very peaceful with few tourists. The villages were very small and quiet. Once we hit the Lukla area we were joined by 100's of other trekkers- a bit of a reverse culture shock!

So far we have climbed a total of 22,912 feet (6974m) and descended a total of 17,832 feet (5429m). Our high point was the Lamjura Pass at 11,594 feet (3530m) and our low point was 4926 feet (1500m). We have averaged 6.5 hours walking each day - our longest day was 8.5 hours! From here on out the trekking times are generally shorter as we have to move up slowly to avoid altitude illness. A big advantage of our chosen trek from Jiri is that we began the aclimitization process early on- Lindsay and I "ran" up the Namche Hill passing many of the poor soles who had just arrived from the Lukla airport.

Lindsay and I are both doing well. We both experience a bought of the khumbu tummy - we recovered quickly. Nepal is a very beautiful and spiritual place. I am a peace here.