We leave in just over 3 weeks for Nepal to visit our friends and I realized the other day that I have not finished telling you about our trip last year!!
Bad blogger.... shame shame.
Time just got away from me. Although it has been almost a year since the trip, it feels like we just got home.
If you would like to get caught up on the trip you can do so here...
I left off just after our arrival in Namchee.
Namchee is a relatively small village built into the side of the mountains in a horseshoe shape. It looks bigger then it is. You could walk from one side to the other in less then 10 minutes. The "roads" were narrow, and we have stopped seeing cars and motorbikes a long time ago. The only way to get here is to arrive in Lukla (by plane) and then walk or ride a donkey, or take a helicopter.
After we arrived, we all needed to eat and rest for a bit. So we hung out in the restaurant at the top of our guest house (hotel). As you can see there were a ton of clouds. We couldn't see anything and shortly after we arrived, we couldn't even see across to the other side of the village.
Once we were fed and rested some of us decided to go explore. We had one team member that was getting sick, so she decided to go to bed. We had another team member that was struggling after the hike. She had previously had 8 knee surgeries!!
We only spent one night in the village before we headed back to Lukla. The restaurant at the guest house has a really cool atmosphere. Everyone was a friend. We met an American couple that had quite their jobs to travel for a year around the world. We met an Israeli couple that had trekked from Jiri to Namchee. There were several South Americans and Australians.
I asked for a "ham burger" for dinner... this is what I got. That space makes a big difference. It was literally ham on a burger bun.
You can see just how exhausted we all were.
That night we asked the guy that ran to guest house when and where was the best time to see Everest. He said at 5 AM and at the Everest Lookout Point.
So we made plans to be up at 4:30 to start the small hike up there.
That night we laid down in our beds and I swear I slept closer the guy on the other side of the wall then I did to my husband. He sneezed at one point and I had to stop myself for saying "bless you!"
The next morning we got up and walked outside and we were greeted with this image.
This is not Everest, but it is part of the Himalayas. And that is not the sun... that is the Moon. This was the first really good look we got of the mountains. They were amazing! Pictures cannot even begin to do them justice. I couldn't believe my eyes, they looked like they had been photoshopped there.
We started the hike to the lookout point just after 4:30 AM. We were the first to arrive and had the point to ourselves for about 20 minutes. We got to see the sun rise on Mt. Everest.
As the sun was comming up. (This is not Everest)
The tiny point furthest away in the center is Everest.
The sun hits Everest first.
All the boys.
The whole group that went to the lookout point.
Calling the wife to tell her where he is!
The peeks from left to right: Taboche, Lobuche, Everest, Lhotse, and Ama Dablam.
It was so cold that Emma and I hiked back down to the guest house to eat breakfast and get ready for the trek back down. While the boys continued up to Syangboche. They had a better view of Everest from there, but it was another 1000 feet above where we were and Emma and I just didn't think we could do it.
After they arrived back at the guest house, we ate lunch and then started the trek back down.
The first bridge we came had a "traffic jam." We waited almost 30 minutes for the bridge to become clear so we could cross.
Same bridge, just from the bottom. We were on the top one. Have I mentioned I hate bridges and heights recently? Because I do...
The trek back down was easier in some ways, and harder in others. We decided to take the lower trail, which didn't have as much elevation but did have a ton of rocks. It ran along the river and was beautiful.
We came the point on the trail where it had started to go up for us on the way to Namchee and we found this sign...
Basically it says to go down, not up. We had gone up.
More donkey trains. We had to constantly stop to let them by. You learned very quickly to listen for their bells and people would start yelling "inside" down the trail as they came.
We again stopped in TukTuk for the night to rest and then continued on in the morning.
I had to physically crawl up the stairs to our room
We arrived back in Lukla just before dinner.
We ate dinner at a place called "YakDonalds," true story.
Pics or it didn't happen. It happened.
I had a Yak burger. It was aweful, don't try one. Ever.
As we were hiking up we noticed a lot of people coming down with sunburns. We figured they had gone up pretty high to get burned like that. They probably didn't... because we got roasted too. Once we were back in Lukla, Nikki and I went looking for aloe vera. Trying to explain what aloe is to a Nepali proved difficult, and we weren't able to find anything.
The next morning before our flight Abinash and I went to "Starbucks." I was so super excited to go, but turns out it wasn't a real Starbucks. I should have known... but it was still good.
I don't think you can possibly understand how scary this flight was. Take any never wracking flight experience and multiply it by 1000. That was this.
Matthew and I ended up on seperate flights. I figured this was not a bad thing, incase one of the planes crashed at least one of us was going to make it home. Morbid I know...
And so... back to Kathmandu we went.The flights went well, obviously because we are both still here.
Next up, our last few days in Kathmandu and then home!!
the flight must have been an experience
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