EBC Part 2: Tengboche

Day 4:
Before leaving Namche we called in at the Sherpa museum.
It's a great little museum documenting Sherpa life.

It also has excellent documentation of expeditions to the summit of Mt Everest.

The inscription under the photo says "Sherpa ladies with jewellery performing Sherpa dance. With the size of the jewellery one can measure the wealth of a family"

The lady on the right was very important, evident by the size of her necklace

Inside a Sherpa home

Dried yak dung makes excellent fuel and it doesn't smell!

Stupas at the museum

En route to Tengboche

Looking back at how far we had come 

 

We passed quite a few porters carrying huge heavy planks of wood. 

A water and rest stop
Josh has a mouth full of pringles, they were his favourite!

Lunch

Drop toilet
ok now I appreciate that not everyone wants to see photos of toilets, but it is an integral part of everyday life, and travel highlights the different facilities one has to use. Throughout our trek we used 3 types - drop, squat and western. These drop toilets are very basic, just a hole in the floor, but efficient and not as smelly as the others because what you pass drops a few feet down onto straw and a sort of matting material, more straw mixture is added after each use and eventually a compost heap is created.

The weather was glorious and the morning had been a gentle descent through beautiful scenery. After almost 3 hours I said to Bonnie "Much as I'm enjoying this beautiful walk I'm getting fed up with walking downhill". Some trekkers going the other way said "It will all change very soon, then you will wish you were going downhill again". How right they were.  After lunch it was all uphill and steep. It became a torturous climb, quite a few people were struggling, even some porters were.
We needed regular rests.

Meditating and resting

I'm a fan of horror films and many years ago one that I watched had the main characters travelling in a car along narrow winding lanes, late at night in a rainstorm. After a while it was evident that they had passed the same landmarks a few times, they weren't lost but rather had passed through some kind of time warp and were destined to be travelling in that car forever more. This climb felt a bit like that! I was convinced we had passed through a time portal and were doomed to spend eternity zigzagging up the side of that mountain never to reach our lodge........

but of course we did and I was so relieved. Himalayan View Lodge 3,867 metres

It had taken Bonnie and myself 6 hours. We had decided to split into 2 groups because it took us longer than the others. Bonnie's husband chose to stay with us and we had the main man Sherpa Phurba with us all the time which was good.
A gruelling day,the most strenuous day for me. 

Tengboche home to one of the most important and largest monasteries in the region.

 It was re-built with the assistance of Sir Edmund Hillary after it was destroyed by fire in 1989.

Our timing was spot on as a service was just starting.

Visitors are allowed in to watch the monks at prayer. We sat quietly at the back and around the sides.

 

After that long hike it was pure bliss to close my eyes and lose myself in the chanting of the monks and the melodic sound of the drums and horns.

It’s prestigious for a family to have a son accepted into a monastery. 
The monks here live in, rather than travel every day.

The dining room

No matter how tough the day had been I recovered as soon as we reached the lodges. We all looked forward to a hearty meal. Afterwards we would play cards or talk about the day’s events, there was always lots of laughter. We were all ready for bed by 8pm and by 9 the lodges were usually silent with all lights out.

My room was basic but had all I needed - a comfortable bed. 
I was very lucky having rooms to myself. I was one of a group of six, two married couples, 
one single man and me. If Ken had been female I would have had to share.

I was too tired for a shower so I don't know what it was like, 
but the toilet facilities were good, western and not smelly. 

Day 5:  Leaving Tengboche. 

Another glorious sunny day

Next stop Dingboche