Day 8: Namche to Khumjung
This morning when our alarm clock went off I immediately went outside to try to catch a view. It has been very foggy most of the time we’ve been above 10,000 feet, but sometimes in the early dawn sunlight it will clear off for a bit. Finally was able to snap a few less foggy pictures and got the one above. By the time we were done with breakfast an hour later you couldn’t see any of the surrounding peaks.
Today we left Namche Bazaar. Unfortunately the bridge from Namche Bazaar to Tengboche was washed out by the monsoon, making it a 3 day trek each way. We didn’t have time for 4 extra days on foot so we improvised and headed for Khumjung, (~12,500ft) a small farming village north of Namche Bazaar.
The first part of this trip is a decent climb up the hill on which Namche is terraced. During this first hour we ran into several Tibetans en route to Namche with goods for the market the next day. Impressive considering its at least a 6 day trek just to get to the border.
As you can see…it was incredibly foggy up on the ridge…
The thing that’s interesting about fog in the Himalayas is that it’s still incredibly bright out. Even with visibility of less than 50 feet, the sun is still strong enough to make you squint if you’re not wearing sunglasses.
We soon reached Shyangboche and the Everest View Hotel on the top of the ridge. The hotel is a Japanese-owned but Nepali run hotel with an accompanying helipad, and at 13,000 feet and change is the highest hotel in the world. Business isn’t too good at the hotel these days since the government banned flights from low altitude locations directly to the hotel airstrip after several severe cases of altitude sickness. Nevertheless, the hotel is rumored to have taken 37 years to build and features an incredible amount of stonework, all of which were carried by hand and then carved. When the weather is clear, you get stunning views of the numerous surrounding peaks including Everest, Ama Dablam, and Cho Oyu. Due to clouds we only got glimpses of Ama Dablam…
The trek down to Khumjung was mostly downhill from Shyangboche, so the afternoon was pretty easy. In an hour or so we were at our lodge for the night on the edges of the village. The guy that owned the place was a veteran of several Everest expeditions and had summit photos pinned up all over the dining room. After the requisite carb-fest lunch of pasta and potatoes, we headed towards the village to explore.
There we found a monestary that was over 500 years old, which was the keeper of what they purported to be a yeti skull. They had the thing in a glass case inside of a safe, inside of a locked cabinet. Looked like a coconut to me. We also toured through grounds of the Khumjung school built by Sir Edmind Hillary’s Himalayan Trust group. It was a pretty impressive complex considering the remoteness of the location. It consisted of around 8-9 smallish buildings clustered together on the edge of the town, with each building housing a different subject. They even had a computer room!
(foggy downtown Khumjung)
Additional photos in the gallery page.
Those are some great pictures!