Day 3: Namche to Phungi Tenga

Having to leave the bustling busy-ness of Namche was hard — literally. To get out and onto the trail, there's a punishingly steep trek outside of the Namche Bowl (Namche Bowl may or may not be a technical name, but it certainly describes the town's formation) where every step up seems to steal precious reserves from the body. Nevertheless, there's only one way out if you want to keep going and it's to aim toward the topmost ring around the bowl. And despite *Tom's best efforts to keep talking, Pradeep the porter-guide said it was time to.

*Tom isn't his real name, but what I've dubbed the chatty and friendly fellow from Vancouver Island who was staying at the Nest Hotel on his way back down. He's 59 and started talking to me after seeing my knee brace, saying he's starting to get arthritis in his knee and has had three scopes in it.

After that, the walk gets considerably easier and it's thanks to someone I've named Gandhi. Again, not the real name, but one I've coined because of his slight, stooped posture, beatific countenance and round glasses. Gandhi spent years of his own time and life building the road in and out of Namche, slowly transforming it from a a broken-in rocky path to a smoothed over trail with a reinforced rock side. There was a donation box and log book where you could sign your name, so I dropped in 100 rupees and scrawled my signature on a line.

One of the rest stops along the way was Khumjung and I have a rueful grin on my face just thinking about it. After putting in my order for RaRa soup (essentially ramen soup with or without scant slivers of vegetables), a dish that would quickly become my favourite, especially with a healthy dollop of hot sauce, I asked Pradeep where the toilet was. He directed me to a shed, which was quite a bit more rustic than the previous toilets I'd encountered. Instead of a porcelain hole in the floor, there was just a missing wooden slat and two large piles of leaves on either side that were slanted toward the back to an even bigger pile of leaves. The idea is you just go in the hole and then sweep leaves over top of where you've just aimed. Shrugging and accepting this style of toilet as the new norm, I exited the shack to be greeted by the laughing restaurant woman. A huge smile on her face, she pointed inside the teahouse, clutched my arm and said, "Toilet!" Oh, well!

The plan was to head to Tengboche but Phungi Tenga, with its lower altitude, presented a nice alternative for the night. It was still a decent length's walk but the chance to sleep at a lower altitude than was hiked, so we settled into a teahouse on the noisier side of the river (a metal suspension bridge linked the two sides) for the night. It was the first chance to use the goose down mummy bag, and made me realize that it being so constantly rented had greatly lessened its loft — and warmth.

*As I'm writing this, I should probably give a head's up that the timeline may not be exactly as it happened... I didn't journal each day as soon as it happened, so some things may be more in spirit than in hard and true fact. But I've tried hard to be as faithful as possible and to cross-reference villages and timelines with Google and Google Images.