Last night, following dinner and blogging, I headed back to my room about 8:00 pm with more than a little trepidation. Last year, my first night here at Namche was miserable. I struggled the entire night with a phenomenon called periodic breathing, which happens at high altitude when your body gets confused about your blood’s CO2 and oxygen content. This year, I came armed with an inhaler that I use to prevent exercise-induced asthma. It seems to have helped, I slept quite well and awoke very rested. I am still at relatively low altitude (3440 m/11,286 ft), but it is a very hopeful sign!
Today we will spend a second night at The Nest, our lodge in Namche Bazaar. Like almost all the lodges in the Everest area, It consist of very basic rooms, bare but for a cot or two, and a table with no heat. The common room is where everyone congregates for evening meals, conversation, and just hanging out in a space made warm by the many bodies. As I write, the Nepali guides and porters are engaged in a raucous card game that I am pretty sure involves gambling. Most of the time spent on a trek is in common rooms such as this. With 8 hours of sleep, and 6-7 hours of walking, that leaves 9-10 hours to kill lounging around these rooms. As you hike to higher elevations, where the air is bitter cold, yak-shit-burning stoves replace body heat as the main source of heat. It is the interactions in these rooms with your fellow trekkers that make trekking more of a social rather than wilderness experience.
We are lucky because we have upgraded rooms in The Nest, that include en suite bathrooms AND (a first for me while trekking) hot showers! Life in Namche is pretty luxurious. There are fancy climbing gear stores, coffee shops, and even an Irish Pub. The luxury ends tomorrow as we head up towards base camp.
Today, to facilitate acclimatization, we took a day hike up the mountain behind Namche to see views of Everest and the high Himalaya. Last year, following a sleepless night, I struggled mightily with exhaustion. This year was night-and-day better. The hike, while still strenuous, was 100 times easier than last year. Tom did quite well, but, because of his high-center of gravity (he’s 6’3/188 cm tall), he goes down hill gingerly, to put it kindly. We were both back enjoying a relaxing lunch by 1 pm.
Tonight I am hoping for another restful night, then tomorrow on to Tengboche, site of a famous Buddhist monastery. Note however that unless internet connectivity has vastly improved during the last year, my blogs may be posted well after the fact, and perhaps not at all for several days at a time.
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