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.