11-05-2012 – Penngboche - Lukla!!

 Altitude: 3950m to 2860m

Atmospheric Pressure: 560mbar

Trek: 31kms / 7 hrs

Feeling a little tender this morning, legs, back and blisters. For breafast, I’ve ordered 2 pancakes with 2 fried eggs. When you translate this in Nepalese, this means 2 fried eggs on each pancakes!! Hence 4 eggs for breakfast, which I ate, but I couldn’t quite manage the 2 pancakes, as Adrian and Sergey had predicted.

We’re off by 7:30..ish and the weather today is much kinder to us. We can see miles down the valley, the wind is down and it looks like it will be a hot day, just to say goodbye!!

Today is the long day, Adrian expects us to take around 8 to 9 hours to get back to Lukla.

Usually, only the guides get back from base camp in 2 days, as usually, the clients are not that much in a rush or don’t quite feel like pushing themselves after the summit day.

So we set off at a fast pace, Sergey and I have our light backpack, we both carrying our precious laptops, Gortex and water, whilst Adrian still has his huge pack on, with kindle, clothes, but also no doubt First Aid and satellite phone.

We make it to Tengboche monastery in less than 1 hour. Tengboche is at the top of a 150m steep hill, on the other side of the valley. Sergey and I can’t resist but race all the way up, under the warm sunshine which is not that clever, considering we still have a long way to go. Adrian, of course, is keeping up with us without breathing too hard.

We’re walking out going a different way to the way we came in, and both Sergey and I comment on how so much more beautiful this way is, we walked through woods and along the sides of the valley are much richer than what we had seen during the walk in (via Phortsee).

It’s getting warm and Adrian decides to switch from trousers to shorts!! Ha-ha, Sergey and I can’t help but notice his calves, as Sergey says “They look like my arms!!”, we laughed!!

We take a mini break to catch our breath and take a few pictures. Even Sergey who keep his camera in his backpack (a sure sign of never taking pictures!!!) takes the time to use his camera. This place is just fantastic, with mountain tops in all directions and the monastery is just beautiful. On a sunny day and blue sky like today, it’s a pleasure to be trekking in this area.

As we set off again, we leave Adrian behind as he’s making various phone calls. Sergey leads the way. It’s down for 500m which take us 30mins. Sergey is like a possessed man, taking porter shortcuts and sometime running down. I blame the music he’s listening to, courtesy of Adrian!! To be honest, it’s very enjoyable, the path is steep, but it reminds us of Chamonix, but at the back of my mind I’m wondering how Adrian will catch up with us if we’re moving so fast, and what if we take a wrong turn?

I shouldn’t worry really, 1 hour later, as we near Namche Bazar, I turn around and can see Adrian only 50m behind…. Unbelievable, we’ve been walking, almost running for 1 hour and half, even overtaking porters and he still managed to catch us up!! The man’s a machine!!

We arrive in Namche in very good time. Adrian had predicted 4 hours, but we’re there in less than 3, but very thirsty and hungry. Luckily, it’s lunchtime!!

I drink 1.5L of Fanta as it would appear my body is screaming for fluid and not so much for food, as I only eat half my pizza.

Sergey and Adrian jumped on the opportunity of the resting time to get on their computer to work.

We’re off again by 12:30, and my legs are already feeling very sore. Luckily, they warm up again after 10 minutes and we’re off at the same crazy speed, with Sergey and Adrian racing each other while I nurse my ankle, thank God I have my walking poles to help support my weight in those crazy down hills.

This 2 leg of the journey is taking its toll on all of us. Sergey’s stomach is trying to get some attention, probably because, just like mine, it’s tired of getting sugary drinks as source of energy.

I’m struggling too, with general tiredness, similar to during a hard marathon, or the ultra I did. The body just can’t seem to be able to find quick energy anywhere, so the pace as to slow down. Despite this, we’re still overtaking people, but eventually, I beg Adrian for another stop for drinks. I’m dehydrated, and can’t stop thinking about water, to the point that I’m hoping it could rain, just so that I could drink!!

So we eventually make another stop at Phakding, for another liter of Fanta!! Although we still had 2 hours to go , Sergey and I agree, that now, it was a question of getting there, rather than racing there.

He took a couple of Imodium as his stomach was getting bad now, and we set of for Lukla, having been warned that the last hill was long and steep.

As always after a stop, the blisters on my feet were screaming, and my body was getting use to the light pain again.

We won’t racing anymore and the last couple of hours to Lukla were testing. Sergey had to stop twice for urgent, unpredicted calls of nature, and getting up that final, never finishing hill kept me entertained!! Obviously, Adrian was waiting for me at the top!!

We got to the lodge on the other side of Lukla, just as it was starting to drizzle.

I crashed on the benches and started to feed my body other things than Fanta, sherpa milk tea, hmmmm.

Sergey arrived a few minutes behind us and we started to compare how tired we all were.

And that was it, the end of the last day of my Everest dream. We’d eventually pushed ourselves silly, even if this wasn’t to get to the summit, it still was a hard day’s work, a day to remember from this trip.

We were so lucky Adrian was the guide who came with us, I’m not sure how many guides would have been willing (and able) to race like this all day, looking for pain.

This has been one of the nice things in this trip, meeting people (few) with similar attitude, rewarded by pushing themselves, enjoying the challenge. How refreshing!

Tomorrow, we’ll fly from Lukla to Kathmandu, and as I felt I was really starting my trip by arriving to Lukla, I’ll probably feel the door closing on my 2012 Everest attempt.

Maybe another time….