Hello to you a little further along on our adventure, one sleep away from EBC (Everest Base Camp), and at an altitude higher than any peak in Western Europe. I’m writing from a village called Lobuche, which is either 5030m or 4930m or 4920m depending on which sign you read ; in any case, we are creeping our way higher and higher to reach our goals.
Dal Baht
I thought I’d keep this one a bit more factual and write about the day-to-day that we have been experiencing on our trek thus far. The walk itself is similar yet not entirely the “same same” as at the start: the terrain has turned rugged and the temperatures brisk. We have been graced with powerful sunshine in the mornings to counteract the cold wind that lightly blows. Our late afternoons have inevitably turned cloudy with light precipitation (light rain, hail, or snow) hiding the jagged peaks that surround us. If we weren’t sitting in a shipping container heated by the residual sunlight from the day, I could look out my bedroom window now and think we might be in the Lake District as the clouds hide the majesty that awaits us. Those real views will need to wait until the sunny morning, instead.
Accommodation at Phadking (2610m)
vs. Accommodation at Lobuche (4930m)
The standard of accommodation certainly has declined since Namche, everything is far more rustic. The paint in the Tea House less vibrant, the integrity of the stone brickwork a little lighter revealing the graining in the single plywood walls we often sleep within. The Western toilets have also seemed to have been left in Namche: the last thing you want to do when you’ve trekked uphill 14km is do another round of squats 🙈. Actually, one of the reasons why it’s mainly floor cisterns vs toilets is because a Porter or yak otherwise needs to haul the Western comforts all this way that I have been describing so far. And to be fair, I expected to squat from the start and have been spoiled with the availability of Western luxuries for the first part of the trek. The other reason is because there seems to be only ground source water from Namche onwards; running taps are scarce. Toilets are flushed by bucket- there is a jug in a plastic barrel of water for your to wash away your business. There have been shower facilities at a few of the stops where a Tea House Manager has invested in a gas boiler to heat the water pipe through a shower. Of course these are usually in a metal shack just outside the main building- I guess you don’t want a risk of a gas leak in your plywood Tea House.
The Tea Houses or Lodges are all in a similar format. A piled-stone facade or outer frame, with a metal corrugated roof. The interior walls usually made of studs and plywood, except where we are now in Lobuche, the walls look like that of a shipping container/ port-a-office. In any case, the walls are thin and leave you only imagining how your group mates must be sitting in their room as you overhear their conversations.
Plywood style room.
Some Tea Houses have a sort of carpet, some do not. The bedrooms are usually two twin mattresses on a wooden frame of sorts. They have all had a sheet covering the foam, and many of the rooms we stayed in had a thick comforter and pillow. Hearing accounts of people catching pink eye from the bedding and seeing bits of debris, we cover our pillow, or use our own, and sleep in our clothes. The latter necessary as the bedrooms are far away from the only heating source in the structure, so tend to be ambient (-5 - +2C so far). Some of our group mates stick to using their own sleeping bags, instead. There is just enough space for you to place your bags and unpack.
The last main features to the Tea Houses are the common spaces next the the rudimentary kitchens. The kitchens look like a slight improvement to those you see in Medieval castles: a chopping place, with some fire sources along the sides to do the cooking. The main upgrade is the line of gas fired camp stoves used as the fire source.
Industrial oven for chocolate cake at Cafe 4410 Dingboche (+ free phone charging)
There tends to be at least one bakery per village; and amazingly, I have seen industrial ovens along the way. Again, these rare ovens, and gas bottles, and food, and everything need hauling up the mountain as you may remember I previously mentioned there are no roads past Lukla.
Pony Express
Food and drink consumables tend to be brought up by Human Porter, usually Nepalese men (although we’ve seen some instances of #shecan) in loads up to 50kg. They fill baskets which are looped around their foreheads, wear whatever shoes or flip flops they own, and make the same grind as the tourists so that the tourists can drink bottled water and eat the chocolate they know. One observation in regards to the younger porters and animal herders is that on the surface they seem no different to Western Millennials. They are totally up to date with pop culture: everyone has a smart phone, and a lot of the young Sherpa have man buns, stretched, studded earlobes and stylish clothes, yet living facilities throughout the countryside are still primitive in places.
Porters carry loads up to 100lb/ 50kg. ALL of the food and consumables.
The food itself has been better than expected and the portions absolutely massive. Each day we have a choice from a menu, with perhaps 20 breakfast items and 50 different lunch/dinner items. Each meal the cooks are able to prepare all of these combinations for us in usually one hour. We are a group of 16 Westerners and 4 Sherpa, so 20 different dinner orders, often with people ordering two choices, shows up piping hot and delicious without fail. There are two routines that help this process along; one, we write our choices in a ledger, and 2, just as we finish our meal, we make our choices for the next meal. As we finish lunch, we choose our dinner; as we finish dinner, we choose our breakfasts. Then it’s out for the day and we repeat at the next Tea House.
What have we been eating? Breakfasts are usually combinations of pancakes, eggs, omelettes, or porridge. Lunch and dinner is broken into two categories. The first, side dishes: often soups, Sherpa stew (seems to be all the leftovers in a stew base), momos (like gyoza), and spring rolls. Then there are the main dishes: rice, egg noodles, or potato base fried with egg, cabbage, carrot, garlic, onion, sometimes meat and spices. There is usually also pizza and pasta noodles on the menu topped with tomato sauce and yak cheese. There is also the more traditional yak meat options and well-known dal baht. Dal baht is a green lentil soup/curry, bowl of rice, side of lightly spiced curry fried vegetables, and if you’re lucky topped with a poppadom. This is the standard curry of Nepal and mainly what the Sherpa eat.
There is always tea: black and milk tea (black tea sweetened with sugar and Nak milk)
Sherpa Stew
Going back to the common spaces at the Tea Houses, where many people spend most of their time because they are extroverts or its warmer than the bedrooms, this is where we meet, eat, play cards, recount previous trekking experiences, and buy WiFi. I say buy WiFi because even when it has been purchased, a usable connection is not always available. The system often goes down because either 20+ trekkers are all trying to update their blogs and instagram posts or there is no power because the towers use solar energy and it’s cloudy in the afternoon.
Yak dung fuelled stove
The sales counter
The space itself is a large open room, with what looks to be a wood burning stove in the middle. This stove is actually fuelled by dried out yak dung which provides a slow burning, consistent heat to the main common space. There are tables in front of the benches that line the sides of the space, also with windows to the beautiful surroundings. There is a payment counter and tuck shop in the space where you can purchase water, chocolate, Pringles, cookies and beer. This counter is also usually the gateway to the kitchen. The space is often decorated with pictures of the various mountain ranges in the area, an ode to the Dalai Lama, and flags and stickers from various worldwide trekking companies that have passed through. The common space is a cozy and relatively luxurious place to spend a couple of hours with your fellow trekkers rather than retreating to the confines of your cold, box bedroom.
Food ledger
Common space
Each Tea House also sells a variety of services, where the price has been increasing as we go further and further. The comparative basket of goods would be to track the price of: a 1L bottle of water (100 - 300 rupees), WiFi (200 - 600 rupees and dependent on solar power), a gas shower (200 - 700 rupees), and battery charging, which comes in all sorts of combinations of prices per item or duration of charge. All seem to be the little things that make the trek a little easier along the way.
Now we depart what I’m sure will feel like the luxury of the Tea Houses for our tents at EBC. The anticipation of what is to come is high as we get ready for our 6 hour trek in. I’d love to say I have an understanding of what the next week will entail; however, expectation management information is about as reliable as the WiFi. When in Nepal, best to be in the moment.
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