Day 6. Deboche (12,369'/3770m) to Dingboche (14,271'/4350m)
I slept about 9.5 hours last night - about 8:30pm to 6am! Today we had a breakfast of muesli and french toast. It wasn't as good as it sounds, but it filled the stomach. Poor Liba - once again she didn't eat much and then felt sick from the french toast.
We left about 8:45, and had a big elevation gain day ahead; about 3700m to 4400m but thankfully not a lot of downhills to gain back. After a brief bit of sunshine we walked in the shade for quite a while. That made it a tad chilly until we found the sunshine again. We had just a few clouds in the morning, but had generally good visibility until after noon. We enjoyed great views of Ama Dablam (and others) as we went.
So - we are on a camping trip, but that doesn't mean that we're totally roughing it. Besides our own sleeping tents we have a cook tent and a dining tent. And in that dining tent we have tables and chairs; the tables are shown on the porter's back in the above picture; amazing!
We took a morning break at Pangboche, and got to Shomare around noon where we had lunch in a great little dining room upstairs amongst the memorabilia from various Everest marathons. I can barely walk at this elevation. I sure couldn't imagine running a marathon! Lunch was half a wiener, cole slaw, potatoes done in a curry, and individual pizzas. It was actually quite good, but again Liba couldn't eat any of it. She had some rice; I don't know how she keeps going.....
Shomare is pretty much the tree line. The terrain was much more open this afternoon. Without any forests to contain us, the trails were pretty braided. It was a bit windy (tailwind) at times but it's still shorts weather (and 2 shirts plus gloves). It seems our kit bags were transported via dzopkio today.
My cough is still there; I'm not sure whether it's getting worse or not. I took one of Paule's Advils today and sucked on a Halls a few times. I also tried to breathe through my Buff a bit (like many of the locals do) and that worked OK except for when I was really gasping for air. Then it felt a bit suffocating.
My pace was incredibly slow! A stroll or a saunter would be a sprint compared to what I/we were doing today. We arrived in Dingboche shortly before 3, which was much earlier than I had expected. The climb wasn't very steep in most places - thank goodness! Stairs are definitely more taxing than a slope.
We never seem to be very far from a river, which makes sense so that the trails essentially follow the river valleys. But - I've noticed there is more and more glacial melt coming down the hillsides to join the rivers. I can see that rafting could be big in this country, but probably very cold! It has definitely become colder as we go higher - the days of shorts may be coming to an end!
When Liba got to the camp she checked out the possibility of renting rooms rather than sleeping in tents the next two nights - 500rps per night. Everyone is in! The rooms are not heated, but having a bed is a nice change. Since we are now above treeline, the only heating in the lodge was in the communal area, and that was meagerly heated by yak dung.
The pit toilets we've had over the past few days haven't been too bad. They sure don't stink like some of the outhouses at home. It must be the organic material they put in the pits.
No comments:
Post a Comment