And then the snow shows up!
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| Mesmerised... |
It is another crispy cold, blue sky and yellow sunny day! Also, (very important!) I slept last night! Finally, after two nights of nothing, last night’s sleep was so solid I woke up only once to pee and even then I felt like a walking zombie. I could not even wake up for the sunrise this morning. I say that with a bit of regret (yes.. I never want to miss a sunrise in the mountains!) but with a lot of relief too (because sleep is dearer! And so much essential to keep me going all day long!)
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| Nice Crisp Morny... Tengboche Monastery |
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| Cutesy house down the valley |
After a while, the lush forest opens up and we start walking along a trail by the slope of the mountain on one side and the valley on the other. We see the river at the bottom of the valley but her cheerful gurgle is a distant faint noise now. Ama Dablam shines bright in the front along with Thamserku and a few others I can’t remember the names of now!
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| A stream joining in with Doodh Koshi |
The hike today feels much easier on the body. Maybe because we are getting used to the altitude a bit better now, or maybe because I got a good night’s sleep that often does wonders to you, or maybe because the trail is easy indeed! I can’t say for sure! But it is a very picturesque gradual ascent with no never-ending climbs nor any calf-screaming gradients up or down.
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| Keep up! |
The trail along the river splits again in two after a distance - one in the right follows a lower slope and the one in the left climbs up to Upper Pangboche to a monastery. We choose to go up to get a better view. This is a lesser chosen way and we feel instantly happy to have lost the crowd.
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| Stupa in Upper Pangboche |
EBC trek is definitely one of the most crowded treks in my experience so far. Because of the popularity and a short weather window, lots of folks flock around at the same time. So any moment of peace is becoming dearly welcome.
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| View from Upper Pangboche |
We get a grander view of mountains from the valley in Upper Pangboche - Ama Dablam (of course being the most striking one!) and also, Nuptse, Thamserku and Everest. The valley here has a touch of burnt copper red foliage that makes it look extremely vibrant. This place is only a couple of hours from Tengboche but we like it so much that we would love to stay here on our way back.
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| Nature paints the best scenes! |
We make our way down from the view point and continue along the trail. We stop at a village called Shomare for lunch. My friend has lost his appetite but my tummy has been growling already. Under the watchful eyes of Ama Dablam, I hoover up some potatoes and veggies.
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| Lunch! |
After lunch, we start climbing up again and now, we find ourselves in a wide valley. No pine trees or lush birches anymore. All the greens around us are now stubbed bushes; the slopes are way more bare and brown. The valley has a lot of boulders and rocks lying around. Some of the rocks are also stacked up in places.
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| Getting a bit rockier now... |
Suddenly, the scenery changes dramatically. The green vistas vanish. We see snow and frost carpeting the slopes! The terrain is way more dry now with dusty, loose rocks. The green and yellow valley is replaced by a monochrome of brown and white!
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| Imja Khola down the valley... |
Even the stubbed dense bushes portray a shade of brown here. We climb down a slope and cross a little bridge across the river (I think, it’s Imja Khola) to cross the valley. The whole landscape looks out of the world!
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| Crossing Imja Khola... |
After crossing various shades of Nature, we finally see a pretty little village tucked in one side of the mountains facing the huge peak of Ama Dablam standing tall and beautiful. We know we have reached our destination for the day.
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| Cloud covers Ama Dablam before I could capture it! |
A monastery gate marks the start of the Dingboche. We amble through it and climb up to the hotel that’s perched at the topmost part of the village. Hiking up to the top bit at this fag end of the day invokes a lot of curse words! But I trudge along thinking that the next couple of days would save us some effort climbing up, even if that’s only 5 minutes!
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| Dingboche! |
The room in the hotel here offers the best view! Right from my bed, I can see the towering beauty of Ama Dablam and also a part of the village in the valley. We are here to stay for two nights to acclimatize, so really couldn’t have asked for a better room.
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| I love my room! |
The evening in Dingboche shifts a little from our usual routine. I suddenly feel so hungry and greedy that I order some hash browns thinking they would be of the normal sized hash brown potatoes that you usually get served in an English breakfast. What turns up is this huge plate of mashed up potatoes spiced up with garlic! And unfortunately, it tastes good too! This means, I gobble up this entire pile of potatoes leaving absolutely no room for dinner later.
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| A moo point in the afternoon :D |
I don’t know if this is the cause of another sleepless night or not but at about midnight I suddenly wake up feeling very uncomfortable. I feel heavy in my chest and find it hard to breathe. This goes on for a while. Towards the morning things soothe down a bit. Sleepless nights are becoming a norm as we go up every day!
Dingboche : Acclimitisation Day - Nangkartshang Peak (5083m) [Day 6]
I get ready groggily. It still feels a bit stifling. I just want to go out and get some fresh air. The plan for the day is to hike up to the Nangkartshang Peak at about 5083m i.e. climbing up 600m and then back to the base here.
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| Let's Go... |
The start of the hike is a steep climb across the village slope to get to a narrow ridge. A nice stupa welcomes you to the top of this ridge where you can feel the force of the wind blowing across the valleys on either side of it. The valley on the other side of this ridge is the way towards Lobuche, our destination for the next day. For today, we walk along the ridge and start climbing up the slope.
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| View of Dingboche as we climb up... |
It is tough. The gradient all along here is pretty steep. The altitude of ~4500m tires you up quickly. Also, the exhaustion from no sleep doesn’t help either. But the most annoying part of it all is - we didn’t carry our windbreaker jackets! And I cannot stress enough how important gear that one is at the top of a completely exposed peak with cold wind blowing from all four sides of the valleys! I curse my guide again; He should have told us! This time, I am really annoyed.
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| The peak at the back..Gosh! So far! |
Anyway, it is what it is. We zip up our jackets and pull down our hats as much as we can and slog our way up. As we keep climbing up, the wind pierces right to the bone. But there is no denying of the beautiful panorama that opens up in front of our eyes.
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| Emareld blue lake in the distance...I don't know the name |
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| Ah, the Ama Dablam (the name means Mother's necklace ^.^) |
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| Makalu and Lhotse ! |
Ama Dablam remains my favourite! It is such a stunning peak! It has a completely different shape and face from this side - equally beautiful if not more! Also, from this viewpoint it appears to be so close, almost like a stone’s throw away from us! And if you observe minutely, you can even spot a little glacier melted pool of water in its lap; It could be seasonal or maybe it’s just global warming but our guide says it didn’t exist a few years back.
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| Spot the water poodle :D |
We sit there and soak in this overwhelming bounty of beauty around us. The wind is really cold and strong. My fingers start freezing even inside the gloves. So, after spending about an hour or so, we gradually make our way down.
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| I don't know which way to look at! Wonders all around! |
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| Taboche on the other side of the valley... |
We find a cosy little cafe just around the corner from us. We go in, sit by the huge glass window, sip an extremely chocolatey cafe mocha and laugh our hearts out at all sorts of things. This feels perfect. This little moment of sitting in this random cafe in this remote tucked away village of Dingboche in front of the lovely Ama Dablam talking about nothing in specific - one of my most precious moments of the entire trek.
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| Panoramic view from the top of - Nangkartshang Peak |
Dingboche (4410m) to Lobuche (4940m) : ~8 KM, ~6 Hours [Day 7]
I hear that a large part of the route today is a simple valley walk. I feel relaxed immediately. Irony is, Einstein was right - everything in this world is relative. It might be a valley walk but it’s not a cake walk, definitely not for me!
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| Across the valley... |
We start the day by tracing the route from yesterday. The initial 10-15 minutes sees us climbing up the slope to get to the ridge that leads to the next valley. It is a soft undulating widespread plainland that stretches along the array of big peaks to the left - Thamserku, Taboche, Cholatse. We can also see the Cho La pass and tiny humans crossing the pass at the farthest corner of the range.
It is such a nice, breezy walk thus far that I feel quite playful and relaxed at the same time. We potter around clicking pictures, fooling around and also attending to some nature’s call. By the time we reach the lunch point, we are somehow very late! This place is called Thukla.
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| Approaching Thukla |
The Sun feels great as we sit down for some well-deserved luncheon. We are so bored by our exact same diet for the last few days that we want to try out something new. So we go for a slight variation of eggs - boiled instead of fried/omelette. This happens to be the costliest eggs I have ever had in my life - 500 INR (800 Nepali Rs) for 2 boiled eggs!
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| Princely Eggs! |
After the costly eggy lunch, we set off again. And this time, the trail changes to an up-steep climb. I get into a zen mode as I start climbing up through the series of steps that seem to be heading straight to the sky.
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| Some ascent that is ! |
After an hour or so of this steep ascent, we get to the top and suddenly snow appears all around us ! A memorial is set up here, dedicated to many climbers who lost their lives climbing the Himalayas.
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| Ama Dablam... keeping company! |
The area is dotted with colourful prayer flags and a number of headstones with the climbers’ names and/or pictures. We run a search for a headstone dedicated to Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary but no success there.
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| The memorial |
We start getting a lot of snow on either side of our trail from here on. The trail doesn’t take any further dramatic up-s or down-s but it does get colder. As we approach Lobuche, it is almost a flat walk with a little stream flowing by our side. The Khumbu glacier melts to form this river called the Lobuche river here.
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| So much Snow! |
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| Altitude kicking in... |
Lobuche is a collection of a few houses, not even enough to qualify as a village. The accommodation here is so limited that some of the trekkers apparently had to travel back to Thukla for the night! We got accommodation in a very dark, dingy teahouse.
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| More yaks and no donkeys now... |
The moment I enter, my mind (which was already a bit murky) seems to be a complete blur for a while. The rooms are tiny, probably to make the best use of space as possible. The kitchens in the teahouses are crammed. There is not even enough space to find a seat! The toilets are just indescribable. Strangely, there is no scarcity of water in the toilets! We squeeze in and gobble up our food as quickly as possible. Somehow, we have to spend this one night.
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| Lobuche river...flowing in front of the village |
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