Maralung: 4117 m
Namche: 3472 m
Distance: 16.7 km (89.1 km total)
It was another cold night, but not as bad as the night before. Rishi had talked to us when we arrived at camp yesterday about changing the itinerary, so instead of taking two days to get to Namche and then doing Namche to Lukla in one really long day, we would push through to Namche today and then take two days to go from there to Lukla.
Breakfast was the usual: cornflakes or porridge, crepes, and omelettes. It was freezing as we started walking, but five minutes later when we reached the sun we started warming up. Our walk down the Bhute Koshi valley wasn’t as interesting as the Dudh Koshi. Every now and then we had views of Kongde Ri poking through the clouds. As we passed through the villages of Taranga and Thambuteng we noticed a lot more earthquake damage than other areas where we had been previously. Many of the houses had been rebuilt, but there were still a lot of tents being used and work going on. There were a number of land slips that we passed over or around, and a couple of spectacular gorges. We weren’t expecting too much uphill today, but there was!
After our lunch stop at Thamo, the cloud started getting lower, which made things quite cold. As we got closer to Namche we encountered lots and lots of dzopke convoys, often with large groups of people who were obviously carrying things back from having been shopping.
Finally we rounded the last corner and were rewarded with a great view of Namche – much better than our first view coming up from Monjo, or even coming down from Syangboche. We made our way to the camp (after taking a bit of a detour for some shopping) and arrived at about 4:15. There was another group of five trekkers staying the night, who had just arrived from Monjo and were on their way to Everest Base Camp.
What bliss to have raised camp beds with mattresses in our tents and flush toilets again!
Next day
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