Day 19: Namche Bazaar

Waking up at the early dawn, I peered blearily eyed out upon the proud peaks overlooking Namche, their snowcaps bathed in red light and obscured through the condensation-spattered window. Once we'd eventually gotten up and enjoyed a hearty breakfast a good hour or so later, we set out on our acclimatisation hike for our rest day, heading up to the famous Everest View Hotel. Again, powering past the lacklustre tour groups, we ascended up to 3,880 m and over a bowl of chips, gazed out upon the colossal view towards Everest. Although the grandeur of the view was largely subdued by the now lingering clouds, we picked out Lhotse on the horizon while the spearheaded summit of Ama Dablam, a nearer, more dramatic peak dominated the skyline at 6,814 m.

After taking in the view, we headed down into Khumjung, where we paid the nominal fee to see the village's monastery, home not only to fine intricate Buddhist shrines and artworks, but also to the scalp of the 'yeti' discovered by Hillary and Norgay during their expedition. Who knows what the strange, furry and coconut-like 'skull' actually was, but the fables did make for an entertaining visit, and we were soon on our way back down into Namche, passing through the national park museum on our way, where we learnt a little about the folklore of Tenzing Norgay and a lot about Thomas' enthusiasm for snow.

Treating ourselves to some tasty lunch toasties, it was finally time for a resupply, and we hit the town hoping to stock up on suncream, snacks and sanitiser. As it turns out, Thomas and I take quite different approaches to negotiation, Thomas preferring to apologise to everyone he didn't (and did) buy anything from, while I preferred to attempt to lowball unnecessarily. Eventually, we picked up everything on our shopping list, even haggling for some warm yak-wool hats, while I replaced one of my trekking poles which had decided it preferred not to function a few days back. With that, we returned to Green Tara, the hotel where we're staying, and had a tea party with Boston-native Renée (by which I mean we ate dinner with her), before hitting the hay for tomorrow's section to Tengboche.Weiterlesen