Trekking in Nepal: Hiking the Everest Base Camp Route

 

Images of some of the world’s highest mountains and friendly, peaceful people with broad smiles linger from our three-week, once-in-a-lifetime trip to Nepal. My husband Dave and I anticipated the beauty of the Himalayas but nothing prepared us for majestic scenery nor the Nepalis’ charm and warmth that we encountered during last month’s sixty-plus-mile Everest Base Camp (EBC) trek.

Mt. Princeton, one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains, now looks like bump when I gaze at it from my office window. My thoughts revert to Nepal. Is life there really two hundred years behind that in America, as suggested by our Nepali guide Arjun? In many ways, perhaps he’s correct – our settlers fought the elements and transported goods by wagon train in the 1800’s.

Today in Nepal, goods are hauled on the backs of humans and animals to mountain villages; wood stoves only heat dining rooms while bedrooms and bathrooms remain frigid; vegetables provide the main source of food; and walking is the primary means of transportation in the mountains. Because of the lack of refrigeration, we basically lived on soup, boiled vegetables, chow mein, eggs, and dal baht: lentil soup, rice and cooked vegetables. The occasional dessert: apple pie or carrot cake, tasted less sweet than American versions. No wonder the Nepalese people are so slender!

Yet even in the mountains, the twenty-first century has arrived. Porters, with loads of upwards of two-hundred pounds on their backs, often read their smartphones as they sped up the dusty, dirt or stone step trails. A few carried a boom box and some sported earbuds listening to their favorite tunes. Internet access, although sporadic, was available up to at least the 16,100-foot village of Lobuche, the farthest we traveled.

We began our trek in Lukla, a village situated at 9,320 feet in the mountains of Nepal, a country almost the size of Arkansas.

Reminders of yesteryear abound in this country which has a population of about 29 million. Trains of mules, and half cows-half yaks, carried huge loads of supplies, including beer and toilet paper, up the trail. Herders and porters, all slight yet muscular, wore sandals, sneakers or sometimes a lightweight boot and dressed in pants, tee shirts and occasional sweatshirt while foreign trekkers bundled up in multiple layer clothing and sturdy hiking boots as they tromped up the trail, using trekking poles.

Higher up, yaks replaced the mules. Early mornings, women washed their hair outside with a pitcher and dish pan in the frigid air; others swept out their lodges; and men readied their livestock for a day of hauling goods. School-age children, dressed in uniforms and sporting endearing smiles, practiced English, the country’s second language, on trekkers and greeted them with namaste, hello or high fives between the villages of Lukla and Namche Bazaar, a stopping point for many tourists.

One twelve-year-old boy, dressed in a school uniform, asked Dave for his name and age. Dave replied and asked the younger for his name. “Nice to meet you,” the boy told Dave in perfect English as he stuck out his hand to shake. Dave still loves to relate his encounter with this enchanting boy!

Our trekking group had it easy. We only carried day packs, and stopped for tea and lunch at various tea houses along the route. Five porters, looking like kids but who were probably in their late teens to early twenties, hauled our overnight bags, sleeping bags and warm down parkas for us each day.

We encountered villages every fifteen minutes or so, with stupas (Buddhist monuments), and prayer wheels, both common sights in this heavily Buddhist region. Hordes of tourists caused traffic jams whenever the trail dipped up or down. Likewise, long trains of mules or half-yaks half cows, which like porters had the right of way, created slowdowns along the trail as well as over numerous suspension bridges. Ninety-nine percent of the tourists respected the animals although one European tourist patted a half yak-half cow which caused the animal to spook, almost lunging into a crowd waiting to cross a bridge. Along the way, we learned that “Nepali Flat” meant lots of ups and downs along the trail.

At times, friendly mountain dogs followed us and looked in much better physical shape than Kathmandu’s feral dogs that often displayed mange, and lay in streets and sidewalks. We couldn’t reconcile these dogs with those that apparently enjoyed a pet hotel, costing 2,500 to 4,000 rupees (the Nepali currency) or $250 to $400 US dollars for an overnight stay, as described in a The Himalayan Times article. Where were these pampered canines?

On the second day of our trek, we entered the Sagarmatha National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of about 443 square miles.

After crossing the lengthy Hillary suspension bridge hundreds of feet above the raging, ice-blue-colored waters of the Dudh Kosi River, we ascended the steep, seemingly-miles-long Namche Hill to the village of Namche Bazaar.

During our rest day in Namche, we hiked to a park where we admired a statute of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary, in 1953 to the top of the world. They were the first individuals to summit Everest. In the background, we saw our first views of Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam.

The crowds thinned above Namche Bazaar. We didn’t see any more school children, a mystery solved days later. More yaks headed up and down the trail, their herders’ shouts drowned out by the sound of a roaring river far below the trail. The towering peaks of Everest, Lhotse, Ama Dablam and Thamserku came into sight. One couldn’t help but stop and taken in the views.

We arrived at a Deboche lodge situated at 12,500 feet, just in time for a major Sherpa festival at the nearby Tengboche Gompa Buddhist monastery.

The next day, two of our fellow trekkers, dressed up to be married at the temple during the festivities. Most of us watched the monks’ processional down the stairs of the brightly painted monastery, set against cloudy skies, and on to a quartered-off area. There monks, apparently in ranking order, sat in rows near a semi-circle of villagers, also seated on the ground. After many chants, offerings, serving of hot tea and cookies to the participants as well as observers, we witnessed rupees, the Nepali currency, handed out to the high monks while villagers gave money to the monks.

At the far edge, two monk “gatekeepers” stood next to our friends as they waited to be married. Then we witnessed the only shoving during our entire trip: crowds of people, mostly Nepalis, pushed the “gatekeepers” vying to be first under an adjacent shelter to be blessed. The gatekeepers controlled the crowd, only allowing a few people under the tent at a time. Our friends were among the second group and received their blessings. Not an official marriage ceremony but the rest of us deemed them married!

The following day, the countryside changed from forests with rhododendron and various evergreen trees to more tundra-like terrain. Yak trails dotted the countryside as did an occasional herder’s outbuilding.

The scenery became even more dramatic: towering white peaks against clear blue skies. We crossed over a river on a bridge and up a few hills until the village of Dingboche at over 14,000 feet, came into view.

For the next two nights, we hunkered down in the detached and unheated guest rooms at the Good Luck Lodge. We kept toasty in our heavy sleeping bags and duvet covers even though by morning the room temperature dropped to 32 degrees. Heavy frost covered our windows.

Dave and I opted for an optional hike on our designated rest day to further acclimate, climbing to almost 15,000 feet. We were rewarded by stunning views of the fourth and fifth highest peaks in the world: Lhotse and Makalu. The next day, we hiked towards the EBC, past free ranging yaks, a roaring river and a wide-open valley before we tromped up a dozen or more switchbacks to Thokla Pass.

Just past the pass, we encountered numerous shrines to those who lost their lives while attempting to climb Mt. Everest. The trail continued on, up through tundra and across a stream to Lobuche, a village situated at 16,100 feet. There we saw damaged buildings from the 2015 earthquake.

Sleep didn’t come to us that night. Dave had a fever and trouble catching his breath when he lay down. The Khumbu cough (apparently caused by dry, cold and high-altitude conditions) gave way to a night of hacking for me. Our appetites and energy vanished.

All our training this past summer and fall, hiking twice weekly seven to fourteen miles with elevation gains ranging from 2,000 to 4,400 feet up to a high of 14,433 feet, hadn’t prepared us for the Khumbu virus or cough. The next morning, we gave in to common sense instead of our hearts and decided to forgo attempting to trek an additional five miles, with a  1,600-foot elevation gain to the EBC.

Although severely disappointed, we didn’t want to chance the need for a medical evacuation or slow down our five fellow trekkers who pressed on.

Instead, Bibek, one of our Nepali guides, accompanied us on our descent of more than two-thousand feet over seven-plus miles in three hours to Pheriche, a village where a fellow trekker had hiked to the previous day.

We rested in our lodge’s cozy and sunny dining room that afternoon and the following day, and watched helicopters land and take off with supplies and evacuating trekkers.

Bibek urged me to see the village’s emergency physician, a doctor from Utah, who opined that I only had upper respiratory infection as she examined me in the local unheated clinic. The cough medicine and sinus pills did little to relieve the Khumbu cough but Dave no longer had a fever, perhaps thanks in part to our texting our Colorado physician who recommended that Dave take antibiotics that he’d sent with us.

Five of our fellow trekkers rejoined us that night. For the next two days, our group, hacking all the way, trekked down towards Namche Bazaar, detouring to the village of Khumjung, one of the highlights of our trip. The village, with its stonewalled walkways and green roofs, houses the second oldest Buddhist monastery, displaying the skull of a reported Yeti; as well as the Khumjung Hillary School. It’s the largest school in the Khumbu region, established in 1961 by Sir Hillary of New Zealand. It was his way of giving back to the Sherpa people after he and Sherpa Norgay summited Mt. Everest. For more about the school see: http://www.khumjungschool.edu.np/

Many of the school’s estimated 300 students, board in the village during the school year while others trek at least an hour uphill and over a pass from Namche Bazaar, to attend the grade 1 through 10^th school.

The students come from villages from all around the region, explaining why we didn’t see any school-age children after Namche Bazaar.

We passed throngs of happy elementary age students as we walked to our charming guesthouse run by a family who treated all of us warmly. We slept in an adjacent building, in cheery, buttercup yellow painted rooms warmed by the sun. That night we stayed up well past our usual 8 p.m. bedtime, chatting near the wood stove about our trip after a delicious dinner.

Today, about sixty-four percent of Nepalis over the age of fifteen reportedly are literate. English is their second language. One of our guides, Arjun, is involved with the Active Hearts Foundation, a New Zealand nonprofit organization, established in 2011, to provide books to libraries in mountain villages. Days before the first library, funded by the foundation, was scheduled to open, the 2015 earthquake destroyed the library and its remote village. Since then, the foundation has funded three libraries in rural villages. (For more information about the foundation, see https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/activeheartsfoundation ) Arjun, the father of three, exhibited a strong passion for his country and a concern that many young Nepalis, who leave his country to study abroad, never return to their home country.

We observed that the Nepali people seemed very happy and compatible with one another although an estimated one-hundred plus dialects of Nepalese are spoken. Eighty percent of the population are Hindus, another ten are Buddhists, and ten percent, other religions. They are very friendly, smiley, super polite people. The only harsh words we heard on our trip came from an “ugly American” who made his countrymen ashamed of his deplorable behavior.

As we retraced our steps from Namche Bazaar to Lukla, we didn’t relish flying out of what’s been called the world’s most dangerous airport because of its very short uphill sloped runway: 1,750 plus feet long and 65 feet wide located in front of a rather large mountainside.

We’d flown into Lukla to start our trek two weeks prior on a twin-engine, sixteen passenger plane. The forty-five-minute flight, delayed for more than three hours because of fog in Kathmandu, offered views of snow-capped mountains and ridges that the plane barely cleared.

Our experiences at both the Kathmandu and Lukla airports gave us a greater appreciation as to why American authorities are so concerned about security. We walked through metal detectors which sang out but we were just waved on. We sat on the Lukla tarmac for about a half hour, waiting to board our return flight to Kathmandu. Although security was a joke, airline employees weighed our day and overnight packs to make sure our plane didn’t carry too much weight! And the airline attendant handed out cotton to stuff in our ears to help with the noisy flight.

A mid-morning flight brought us back to the chaotic city of Kathmandu. Dave and I had experienced that chaos when we first arrived at the Kathmandu airport after leaving the international terminal. Crowds of drivers, porters and others lined the street opposite the terminal, vying to transport arrivals to the city. Dave thankfully quickly spotted our group’s driver who whisked us to our hotel in the tourist section of Thamel in only fifteen minutes. During daytime hours, the trip to or from the airport can take hours because of all the traffic.

Kathmandu of course hadn’t changed in the two weeks that we’d been on the trek. We again walked along the narrow sort-of-paved streets shared by pedestrians, rickshaws, taxis, motorcycles and other vehicles. Stores lined each side of the street. Large clumps of wires hung above the street. Kathmandu buildings and kitchens would fail any type of American inspection.

An occasional policeman tried to direct traffic at busy intersections. School children, in uniforms, walked to school apparently unperturbed by the dust, air pollution, noise of traffic and crowded sidewalks which lined the busier streets. We again followed locals to cross streets, darting in and out of traffic. Some pedestrians wore surgical type masks to protect them from fumes.

 

 

 

Dave and I brought the Khumbu cough back to Colorado but are grateful for our experience and moved by the poverty and kindness of the Nepali people. We are more thankful for what we took for granted: running, potable water; refrigerated foods; toilet paper; western toilets which flush toilet paper; hot showers; good lighting in all of our home; and completely heated houses. Steak, pizza and green salad never tasted so good!

 

 

Enjoy our journey and four more photos!

Featured photo: Ama Dablam.