The Last Leg of the Trek

After a really good night’s sleep we woke at 6.30am and started to pack our rucksacks. A breakfast of boiled eggs was slightly elongated as at first they only brought half the eggs and then the second set of eggs were undercooked…with the whites still running in the shells! Grim! We finally left at 8am, knowing that we had about 6 hours of trekking ahead.

The walk was long and undulating…to put it politely. The first section was mostly downhill, from Namche down to the river below. The track was different to last year as the bridge was deemed to be unsafe after Monsoon, so we had to use a higher, new bridge…it just took us two attempts to find it. We stopped a couple of times very briefly until we arrived at Phakding where we stopped for a hot drink and the boys ate very out-of-date croissants and cinnamon rolls.

The walk from Phakding to Lukla was more up than down and my body was certainly getting tired. After 5 hours and about 45 minutes we arrived at Lukla – hooray! We walked up to Tara Lodge where we began our trek, ready for our final afternoon in Lukla before we fly home tomorrow. Jetta was slower than us today so we had some time sat in the sun, watching the world go by and waiting for some lunch to be cooked. It took forever. Probably over an hour, I lost the plot waiting and had managed to sort my rucksack, wash in a bowl of cold water, change and sort my gear out AND write some of my journal by the time it arrived. Q was famished, bless him. And then when it arrived it was truly hideous. It can only be described as a bowl of greasy slop. Needless to say, I didn’t eat it. It was a good job that Paul’s fried MoMos and Q’s Dal Bhat were much nicer.

After food we grabbed our books and headed through the Lukla village to a little coffee shop we found last year. We had coffee and cakes and read for a couple of hours. Once the sun had truly vanished behind the mountains and a chill had set in, we wandered back to the Lodge and ordered dinner. A typical miscommunication meant that my Chicken Chilly plate arrived about an hour before the other two ordered meals…but it was repulsive, the raw heat of too much chilly and ‘chicken’ which was actually a mix of bone, fat and odd remnants of chicken. Repulsive. I didn’t eat it. I couldn’t stomach it! The Everest beer went down well though!

I finished my second book of the trip – Coronation Everest – a remarkable read which describes the first ascent of Everest in 1953.Many places, views and descriptions are familiar and the story is beautifully written in a very public-school English kind of way. A great read and it is timely that we have reached Everest Base Camp in the Diamond Jubilee Year.

After the boys enjoyed their evening meals we walked back into the village for a New Year celebratory drink. We found an Irish Bar earlier in the day and chose to return there. They had to put the lights on for us as we were the only people there! We had a couple of drinks, ate Pringles and played pool… we stayed until about 9pm as the doors to our lodge shut at 9.30pm,and no-one else came in for the duration! We strolled back and were all tucked up by half nine…Happy New Year!