Day 18: Phakding to Namche Bazaar

A brisk morning jaunt took us beyond the schools of sluggish tour groups and through the continuous teahouse options of Zamphuti, Toc Toc, Benkar and Chumoa before arriving in Monjo. Our priority in Monjo: to secure some permits to get into the national park, and we figured the more people behind us, then the shorter the queue into Sagarmartha might be. This wasn't quite the case as there weren't many queues at all, but instead tour guides all jostled to secure passage of their own clients while we were left working out where exactly we needed to register ourselves as independent hikers. Between making the mistake of waiting at the wrong desk, we managed to secure trekkers' cards to be able to pass through the region's checkpoints while we also handed off the conservation area fee to some official. Just as we'd been sent off through our final booth, it was looking like we were in, or so we thought, when suddenly some army man pulled us to the side right in front of the entrance gate and demanded to know if we had a guide. Shiit, we thought, assuming the worst: Nepal had recently implemented a law that every trekker has to be accompanied by a guide, and despite the Khumbu region refuting that, we were momentarily fearing being turned away. As it so turned out, nothing to worry about; as soon as we admitted to our guidelessness, army man seemed only to go on some long speech about some basic rules including how we weren't to teach anything unsavoury to any monks (damn, there go my plans.)

Regardless, we were in, and the scenery through the preceding section and onto Jorsale was immaculate, with the enigmatic blue waters of Dudh Koshi river churning through the valley headed by the towering Thamserku peak. And of our five river crossings of the day, we had to turn back from halfway across one hanging bridge when we saw a file of Dzo's (yak-cow hybrids) being marched at us in the other direction. When one of those things comes stomping at you, you get out of the way, and a hanging bridge isn't exactly the place to gamble on width for two. Our next eventful river crossing came after a snappy lunch stop, at the famous Hillary bridge, a particularly long and lofty hanging bridge, which, whether for the effect of the turbulent gusts of wind, or the synchronous steps of several trekkers, the bridge swayed temperamentally back and forth (a bit uncomfortably so for my liking.)

Once relievedly stood on the other side, the final obstacle before Namche Bazaar was a 500 m ascent up through dusty forest. Although drawn out and occasionally hard work, this stretch was relatively uneventful minus a momentary view of Everest and witnessing more abuse on the horses who were transporting goods by their keepers. At the top, we stopped at the checkpoint, chatting to American Rachel in the queue. Shortly after, we arrived in Namche, which itself is a bizarrely big and well provisioned town given its 3,500 m elevation, allowing us a generous selection of places to stay. After narrowing down the options, we slurped up some chocolate pudding and settled in for tomorrow's recommended rest day to help along with the acclimatisation.Read more