Everest Base Camp Day 13

We stayed overnight at Orsho. It isn’t on most maps as it basically consists of one sole teahouse. However it was one of the best places we stayed at. The dining room was upstairs so we got a great view of the landscape, and also all the people going past.

This is the view looking up, from Orsho. Magnificent.

As we were preparing to leave this man rode past on his horse.

Our route ahead, along the valley on the path on the right.

Once again we had a couple of dogs follow us. But this time they were less endearing. On a narrow path, they were darting in and out around our legs and you had to be careful not to trip on them. But worse, yaks will often attack dogs and so what happened is that when yaks turned up, the dogs hid behind us. That had the potential to end badly for us!

 

At this stage we’re dropping below 4,000 metres but still lots of snow covered peaks.

The view as we pas through Pheriche.

It was a long day trekking. We covered 15 to 20 kms.

You can see Tengboche in the distance, with peaks behind it.

The remains of a bridge that collapsed. I think they tried three times to have a bridge here but it kept collapsing on the far side due to the unstable rock. Finally they did an alternate bridge down at river level.

Getting back into walking through bush and trees.

We got to Tengboche for morning tea. You can see the famous Buddhist monastery.

Inside the monastery.

The front entrance of the monastery.

The Nepalese porters carry incredible loads. Those working for trekking companies have weight limits of 24 to 30 kgs. Each porter tend to carry two bags or packs. But the independent porters have been known to carry loads of over 100 kgs, as they get paid per kg. Here is the load being carried by a porter up a 600 metre vertical ascent hill.

The path down from Tengboche to the river was one of the few parts I really did not enjoy. It was hot, dusty and a rocky surface.

At the bottom we had a bridge to cross. As you can see you really want to let the yaks get off the bridge first, rather than try and squeeze past them!

Then we had a 400 or so metre ascent, but this was actually more pleasant than the downhill.

You can see here the path we took down from Tengboche.

Readers with good memories may recall this from Day 4. This is where we diverted from the main Base Camp route to go up to Gyoko. So the loop was now complete.

 

We had a late lunch (2 pm) at Khumjung. Pretty hungry as had been trekking since 7.30 am. This crow decided to help itself to some of the leftovers. What happened next was hilarious. Another crow flew down next to this one, keen to share in the food. This crow then made a sound which everyone one of us heard as “Fuck Off” and the other crow flew away. We were in near hysterics at this.

Then around an hour to Namche Bazaar. Despite being a mainly downhill day, was a reasonably tiring one. We got in around 3.30 pm, so were on the trek for around eight hours.

Tomorrow is a rest day at Namche, and then two more days of trekking back to Lukla.