Lukla to Khumjung (II)

From Phakding, my porter Pemba and I climbed up to Namche Bazaar, where I spent the night to recover and acclimatise. I was half expecting to wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air, which some of my friends had warned me about. However, all I remember was waking up throughout the night and feeling really weak in the morning. It felt just like a bad flu, without nose-related symptoms - I did recall waking up in the middle of the night and realising that for the first time in weeks, my nostrils were clear!

Note that many travellers actually spend two nights in Namche, but I was trying to get to Khumjung as quickly as possible to see Sara at her field site before she headed off to Gokyo. At the time however, I really thought it was a flu bug, and the next morning I pushed on up the steep steps towards Khumjung.

Namche Bazaar from above


The terrifying steps leading up (or down) from Namche.


On the way up, I saw a few people skydiving from of a small aircraft. The same aircraft landed soon right above the steps we were climbing.





I was later told that there's only a small window of opportunity to skydive from one of the highest dropzones in the world - the highest is if you jump out of a helicopter at Gorak Shep according to the Everest Skydive website. They only do jumps for a week or two in October and May every year.

We soon reached Syangboche (though I wasn't feeling great and needed to stop every few minutes), where one of the world's highest airstrips -if not the highest- is located. According to the website, guests at the nearby Everest View Hotel can fly directly to Syangboche, so they don't need to make the trek from Lukla. Other websites however suggest that this is no longer the case, as too many people would suffer from altitude sickness and the supplementary oxygen provided in the hotel's rooms didn't help much.







In any case, after leaving the landing strip, we climbed a small ridge, and once over that ridge found ourselves in Khumjung. By this time, I was absolutely exhausted and felt like crap. I don't remember much from then, apart from having a cup of milk tea, taking a photo with Pemba, my porter / guide, and downing a bowl of garlic soup before crashing in bed till dinnertime some six hours later.

Me with Pemba


Next time, I would probably spend an extra night in Namche. But at least I started feeling better my second day in Khumjung.

Lukla to Khumjung (I)

After landing in Lukla, it then took me three days to get to Khumjung, the village where Sara was doing her PhD fieldwork. Even though I landed at 7am, and had a porter, I could've made it to Khumjung by nightfall on foot. Of course, there's the issue of altitude sickness / acute mountain sickness (AMS) - the risk of it developing into something much worse than a headache and nausea was enough reason to take it slow.

Day 1 was pretty easy going. I got in early on the first Agni Air flight at 7. Found a young porter named Pemba (he said he was 17, though that changed to 16 on the third day) from Lukla. I had a quick morning tea in Lukla, before setting off for Phakding. We could've easily made it to Monjo, which is much closer to Namche and Khumjung, but Pemba reckoned it would be cheaper in Phakding and he seemed happier to spend the night there because he had friends and family in Phakding.

(A note on pronunciation, aspirated 'ph' in Nepali is in free variation with 'f', so 'phakding' can be pronounced either as 'puck-ding' or 'fuck-ding'.)

On the way to Phakding


The village of Phakding


Where I stayed in Phakding - neither the Yeti Cyber Cafe nor the 'Herman' Bakery Cafe were open though.


By 10am, we had arrived in Phakding, which meant I had a lot of time to kill. Thankfully, there were a few short walks / climbs around to do. I decided to cross over a bridge few tourists heading up to Namche would've crossed, since it only led to a few villages on the other side of the Dudh Koshi (literally 'Milk River').

The Dudh Koshi


The bridge was a little more rusty than the other bridges on the main path.


Most suspension bridges on the main path between Lukla and Namche looked like this.


On my walk past the small village of Sano Gumela (incidentally sano means 'small' in Nepali), I met an old Sherpa lady and a young Tamang girl carrying a basket, with the strap around her forehead, as is the fashion across much of the region. The girl was quite shy, but the old lady was quite happy to share her thoughts on a number of things. Sadly, much of what she said was lost on me. She did say in Nepali that she was going to the nearby monastery. I tried asking her if children were still speaking Sherpa at home in her village, but I'm really not sure what the response was. I think she did say that there were many non-Sherpa people in the village, including the young Tamang girl who was with us.

She was quite a fearsome woman, stopping every so often to pick up a large rock in the middle of the path and throw it to one side. Yet, when a train of dzopkyo (a yak-cow hybrid found at lower altitudes) came up the narrow path, bells aringing, it was so funny to see her running back in my direction like a little girl, getting us to find higher ground so that the train could pass us.

The old Sherpa woman, who kindly posed for a photo after she saw me stopping to take pictures of the landscape.


Suffice to say, it was an interesting little side trip I had around Phakding, though the next time I go up, I'd probably want to stay at Monjo - the next morning's climb was pretty hard...

Guides and Porters

Last night, an English guy at my guest house here in Namche mentioned that despite his attempts at speaking Nepalese (sic) with people on the trekking routes, he found quite a number of guides quite unfriendly, especially if he wasn't part of that guide's group (and since he didn't have a guide). He said this unfriendliness, bordering on hostility, was much more evident in areas past Namche, but people further down in the Dudh Kosi valley were much friendlier.

I can't really say that has been my experience, although I've spent most of my time in Khumjung, where groups just tend to spend the day to acclimatise before heading back to Namche. I did notice one of two guides today on my walk to Thame were not particularly forthcoming with conversation at rest stops, but most of the guides (and porters) seemed quite keen to know where I was from and where I learnt Nepali. One porter even decided to lag behind his group to chat to me about his Bachelor degree in English Literature and Rural Development - we joked that trekking in Khumbu counted as 'homework' for his Rural Development course.

The guides also seemed more than happy to tell me which path to take and how long it would take to reach the next village each time I asked them. This was in stark contrast to the English guy's experience (he said that some guides refused to tell him if he was going in the right direction, since he wasn't part of their group). As I was having lunch in Thame, one guide even came up to me to chat about where he'd been - he'd taken three guests up to do the 'three passes', but two of them got sick along the way, so he was left with one trekker from New Zealand.

My feeling is that two things are at work here. First, as a 'Western' foreigner he is seen as having more money and not taking a porter or guide is viewed negatively. He mentioned in Tengboche, when the guy at the guest house asked him if he had a porter and he answered in the negative, the reply from the owner was 'typical'. For some reason, it seems more reasonable for me to be travelling alone, perhaps because I look more Nepali (?) and even though I could be some rich foreign Japanese / Korean / Chinese person, helping me out for nothing seems more reasonable because I look more like family to them.

The second thing is, and I didn't have the heart to tell the English guy, was that his Nepali was simply awful. He said he greeted people on the path with 'Namaste' (the ubiquitous 'hello'), followed by 'Kasto chha?' - a phrase Lonely Planet says means 'How are you', but one that I have rarely heard uttered to strangers. When he said the word for 'water', it sounded just like 'pony', not 'paani'. When he tried ordering in Nepali at the guest house, I had no idea what he was saying. Not that my Nepali is great, but at least I've had lessons and I've been able to hold conversations with people (even if it's only about where I'm from and what I do and where my family live and what they do...). I suppose when people hear him speak Nepali, they might just think 'why on earth doesn't he just speak English'. Again, being 'Western' usually entails a knowledge of English, whereas in my case, it's more acceptable for me to speak in broken Nepali because there's less expectation that I know English.

Just my two cents here.