Day 17: Puiya to Phakding

Today marks ten days of trekking, over 100 km of distance and 15,000 m of elevation changes from Jiri.

Setting off from Puiya, the aroma of horse manure present in the air was at an all time high as whole schools of mules would come paraded through the narrow paths by strict horse masters, who took no invitation to beat their animals quite viciously and unnecessarily to keep them in line (horses and yaks are used to transport everything beyond where jeeps can access here). It was also interesting to witness the attempted extension of the jeep road, big JCB excavators drilling away at the cliffside presumably wanting to take accessibility as far as Namche. On our descent into Surke, the constant stream of aircraft coming into land at nearby Lukla was quite the sight, and Lukla itself is quite the airport. A steep runway barely 500 m in length, bookended by a sheer cliff one side and a sheer drop the other, just watching planes come into land was scary enough.

After a hop back up to Chaurikharka for lunch, where I got my daily coke fix and we savoured spaghetti, an omelette and some chips, we finally merged onto the tourist trail beyond Lukla. And the difference was quite startling, with crowds of dazed looking old tourists bumbling through the much gentler and more commercialised path in constant streams of tour groups, each of which look comically like the team-building outing of some office company in Slough. This is quite a starked change for us, having gone from over a week of near-solitude to negotiating the hiker traffic. Still, we pushed on and finished in Phakding, where we found a practically luxurious alpine cabin style teahouse complete with en suite hot shower and western toilet! To celebrate, we gorged on pizza and I fell asleep before I even managed to find out that Bournemouth lost to Luton (then waking up at 3 am to write this, you're welcome goodbye.)Baca lagi