Reaching Namache
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2007
1
8
12
Trip End
Oct 29, 2007
Namache,
Nepal
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Yeti Air tried, first flight to Lukla turned back, thick clouds.
Clouds eased some for our flight, circle to find an opening.
Lukla has no instruments, a single 300 yd long uphill airstrip.
Lukla, only a narrow muddy alley crowded around airstrip.
Porters shouldered our duffles, we started out, laden yaks passed us.
Down, down, down to cross a wild stream, chocked with rock and silt,
As Mother Nature wears down the Himalayas to build up Bangladesh.
Suspension foot bridges span the streams,
Squirming and shaky, but good steel cables satisfied a metallurgist (sort of).
Then up step after step after step. Each step gets us higher,
But at what cost to my knees, legs and heart?
Treks start thru pine tree forests, festooned with Spanish Moss!
Here in the Himalayas? ? Remember, this is 'South', barely north of Florida
Lower forests (still higher than Denver) are rainy all summer, cold but dry in winter.
One of the suprises, the wonders of Nepal and the Himalayas.
Mixed with and above the pine,
Rhodhedendron abounds, Western Pa revisited.
Higher still the pine become stunted, and shrink,
But Nepalese become larger in the chest to get more precious oxygen.
Namache put us into the real Himalayas,
Surrounding peaks hidden by clouds, then briefly exposed.
Snowy crowns, stark and stirring, eye candy for the mountaineer or adventurer.
Still well below Everest, the fact makes full Everest views more tantalizing.
