Everest Day 3: Namche Bazaar ‘Rest Day’

Yesterday we left off with my arrival in Namche Bazaar. Here are a few more images from our walk into town.

Local women wash clothes in the river. Later, they will hang them on rooftops to dry.

This ends up being my favorite village on the trail. Here are photos of the lovely tea house we call home for two nights.

I get a double room all to myself on the upper floor overlooking Namche Bazaar.

This view sets me back $2.50 per night… not bad!

You can see laundry drying on those rooftops below:

Here’s the main room in the tea house. Most of them look like this — impressively polished wood with fabric-covered benches and a central stove. It’s typically the only warm room in the lodge and everyone gathers here until bedtime to stay warm. The bedroom walls are made of thin plywood and it gets cold at night once you stray from the fireplace area.

The next day is a “rest day”… take that with a grain of salt, because we still have to hike four hours to help my body acclimatize. Namche Bazaar is at 3445 meters high, or 11,300 feet elevation. For comparison, last night we stayed in Phakding, which was 8,500 feet elevation.

We head up this steep hill below to Everest View, a lodge with — you guessed it — a view of Mt. Everest. If the clouds cooperate, we’ll get our first glimpse of the world’s highest peak today. Cross your fingers.

These yaks get the day off. They’ve earned it.

Nope, the highest peak below isn’t Mt. Everest. I get excited each time the clouds part and we spot a new peak, but no dice.

Looking back down on Namche Bazaar:

After our hike we’ll stop at the museum on that hill below.

And we’ll check this out later, too:

We’re not even half-way to Everest View when the clouds close in. Our odds of seeing that famous pyramid peak today are dwindling.

The final steps…

Here’s the view from the lodge:

Unfortunately, our view of Everest is blocked and I’ll have to wait a few more days to see it.

I order tea and share it with young Mingma, my porter / guide (until his brother, the older Mingma, takes over in a few days, as I explained yesterday).

Time to head back down to Namche Bazaar.

We glance down at part of the trail we’ll climb tomorrow. See that white stupa way down below? Tomorrow I’ll post a photo taken underneath it.

On our way back down, the clouds disperse and we enjoy truly remarkable vantage points.

“Mingma, hold on, one more photo.” — me, on a loop, throughout the entire trek.

Bless his heart — my guide / porter is incredibly patient.

This is an airport runway:

I know, right? I wouldn’t want to land there, either.

Spectacular view of Namche Bazaar:

I order momos for lunch, which are Nepalese dumplings and my new favorite food. These have meat in them, so sadly I won’t get to enjoy them again until the end of the trip. (The sherpas carry meat uphill with no refrigeration so it’s not necessarily safe to eat above Namche Bazaar.)

I’m tempted to say, “I love your momos” to the woman who brings out my food, which strikes me as humorously suggestive when taken out of context. Try saying that to a woman in the States who doesn’t know the term for Nepalese dumplings… I picture someone getting slapped.

And I happen to be in Namche Bazaar on the one day of the week that they have an outdoor market (Saturday), but I’m too late by the time we return from our hike and people are closing up shop.

But there are still plenty of regular stores open in town. Prices are similar to those in Kathmandu, so if you need to pick up any additional trekking gear, now is the time to do it. I purchase several more pairs of wool socks, thin gloves that I can wear while operating my camera, a back-up pair of sunglasses, a deck of playing cards, and more Oreos.

Fact: Oreos are key to a successful summit bid.

Aren’t these animal hats adorable? On my way back down the mountain I buy the lion one for a few bucks and wear it in my Halloween photo.

They sell yak bells, in case you want to continue hearing that incessant ringing once you get back home.

This is Everest Bakery, and it is delightful. I order pastries and even a pizza one night. Remember how yesterday I wrote about that silly rule where tea houses insist that you order at their own restaurant instead of eating elsewhere? Well I’m so desperate for pizza that I feign stomach issues and skip out on tea house dinner in favor of a meal here.

Spoiler alert: the pizza is only so-so. But what can you expect above 11,000 feet? Order the apple pie instead.

And they have free wifi…! Everywhere else you’ll pay several dollars per hour to connect, and it gets more expensive as you get higher up the mountain. I only use wifi a few times on the whole trek and it’s generally slow, but I’m grateful to post a few iPhone photos to Instagram and Facebook.

A few night shots of Namche Bazaar:

Toilet paper, anyone?

Oh, I forgot to mention that I also picked up fleece-lined booties in town (pictured below). These prove to be a clutch purchase. I wear them to bed every night.

And I read To Kill a Mockingbird near the warmth of the fire before turning in for the night. I think I manage one game of Solitaire and another chapter of the book before passing out from exhaustion. This makes for a cozy tableau:

One quick word about footwear — I stupidly don’t have proper hiking boots with me. I made the call to leave them home during my final hours in the States last March because I didn’t have space in my luggage for them, and I knew I wouldn’t wear them anywhere else during my travels other than hiking to Everest Base Camp. So I made the tough but necessary decision to leave them behind. And while I consider buying new hiking boots in Kathmandu, everything I read on-line says to NOT buy new shoes for this trek, and only wear broken-in footwear. So I decide to plunge ahead with just my sneakers / tennis shoes. This might have proved to be a terrible decision if the snow was really bad higher up the mountain, but luckily it’s packed down so I mostly walk on top of it. I wear two pairs of socks every day (one of them wool) to stay warm. And I have a small roll of duct tape with me in case these soles wear out on the trail (thankfully they don’t). I wouldn’t recommend wearing sneakers, but I’m grateful it worked out for me.

So here are the three pairs of shoes I trek with: sneakers, fleece-lined booties, and sandals. (The sandals are for late night bathroom runs and I purposely pick up the kind with straps so that I can wear my socks with them in this cold weather.)