Ghat: 2578 m
Monjo: 2853 m
Distance: 7.7 km (13.2 km total)
I woke up about 3 am (as usual) and needed to use the toilet. The cloud had gone, there was very little wind, and the full moon was lighting up the campsite and Nupla, the mountain behind. At around 4 am everyone was woken up by a dog that was running around the campsite, barking its head off, until it was chased away. It felt like I had a good night’s sleep, and I was very pleased that my headache from the afternoon before had gone.
Our daily routine went something like this: For our wake-up call, tea and hot water for washing was brought to our tents. We then had to pack our red bags and day packs by breakfast time, usually an hour later. As soon as the Sherpa guides were ready to go, we started walking. Most days we only walked about 4 or 5 hours, lunch would be at the campsite when we arrived. For the longer days we would have lunch somewhere along the way; either at a lodge or as a picnic. Sometime in the afternoon we would have washing water brought to our tents; about an hour after that we would have afternoon tea, with dinner at about 6:30 where we’d find out the schedule for the following day.
Today we were on the trail by 8:15, again at a slow pace. Some of the group were complaining it was too slow, but I think they don’t realise the effect altitude has on the limits of your exertion – it doesn’t take much to knacker you. Better to go slowly and get there without a headache, than try to go faster and suffer for it later. Besides, there’s no point in going faster – we have heaps of time in the afternoon.
We continued following the Dudh Koshi, passing some huge mani stones (prayer stones) and prayer wheels on the way. You’re supposed to go around these clockwise, so they are on your right hand side. The paths around both sides are well established so it’s not too hard to remember. I have managed to get caught out a few times with poles that have prayer flags on them, as these are sometimes well towards one side of the track.
Just past the village of Phakding (pronounced pack-ding) we encountered a traffic jam: dzopkes coming down, donkeys going up, and us caught in the middle. Not too far from there we had our first views of Thamserku (pronounced tam-sear-koo).
Raewyn and I have tended to end up at the back and have been asking Rishi what the name of this or that village or mountain is. A few times the response to the latter has been, ‘It doesn’t have a name, it’s just a hill’!
The village of Monjo is on a kind of ledge above the river, with a fairly steep climb getting up. Funnily the complaints about the slow pace turned into compliments about how good it was going slowly… The camp was another few minutes’ walk along a goat track back from the village. Lunch was served as soon as we arrived. Since our washing water was still some time off, we decided to go for a wander through the village. The gate to Sagarmatha National Park is just on the other side. We will pass through it tomorrow.
On our way back we saw an old lady resting, with her load beside her – 4 cases of 12 x 1L water bottles each, i.e. 48 kg. It made me sad to think how far she had carried it, how much further she had to go, and how little she would probably be paid considering a bottle sells for 80-100 Rs.
We were talking with some of the others today about how awkward we felt being waited on hand and foot – meals, washing water etc. The porters sleep in a corrugated iron shack with no door, and carry 30 kg of stuff, which must be at least half of their body weight. But compared to what other porters are carrying, maybe they see this as a cushy job. And they have a sense of humour; at dinner when Luk, one of the Sherpa guides, was bringing the food around for seconds and asked Raewyn if she wanted more rice, she said ‘Just a little bit’ and he dropped about three or four grains on her plate, with a cheeky smile...
Next day
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