Everest Trek Day 1: Lukla to Phakding

  Phakding, Nepal
Wednesday, November 28, 2007

So our Everest Trek begins!

The plane landed in the small village of Lukla that lies at 2840 metres and today we wanted to get as far as the village of Phakding (2610m).

Almost as soon as we left the plane, and for the next few minutes as we left the airport behind us, we were a little bit swarmed by people wanting to be our guides for the trek, or porters for our trek, or porter-guides, or people claiming to be agents for porters, guides, or porter guides. You get the idea. We just wanted to get out of that scene quickly with our packs still on our back. The swarmers got the message after a few kms.

It was a beautiful introduction to what would be our first day of our Everest hike. The scenery was fantastically green (not lush though) and we would catch glimpses of faraway towering mountains every now and then. There were many bridges to cross even during the first day but fortunately all the ones we crossed early in the trek were quite solid such as this one:

How many bridges

Still, many of the bridges put us a distance off the ground (or glacial river) that could make some people sick.

Another way this 1st day eased us in way that we were actually going down in altitude (230m) from the place we flew into (Lukla). So this was cause for celebration as well.

Not only was the scenery brilliant but we also crossed paths with other trekkers who were either also starting their trek or just finishing up. We also crossed paths with many porters and yaks, all of whom would be carrying eye-popping loads on their backs. We met this one porter who was carrying 86kg! There were stories about regarding a porter who would carry 120kg! It occurred to us that we could have porters carry each of us up as we each weigh easily less than that.

Something else that was fantastic is the places or items of religious significance that we would see today and throughout our trek. Things such as temples in cliff sides, stupas in many places, prayer wheels, rocks or tablets with religious scripts engraved or painted on them such as seen in this photo:

Me and painted stones towards Phakding

One oddity was an individual of Nepalese decent who was trying to pass himself of as a police inspector (at least that's what he introduced himself as to me as I was trekking). Not sure what he wanted (likely money) but he never got as far to even ask for any from me.

We arrived at our destination Phakding at around 4pm and the people at the first guesthouse we chose were quite welcoming. Their son Tashi and their daughter Neema were both adorable. Tashi could not get enough of our trekking poles:

Tashi with trekking poles

And Neema was really cute too. My friend Mazen tried to converse with her a bit just by asking her some simple questions:

Mazen: "So do you like school?"
Neema: "Ah....yeah"
Mazen: "What's your favourite subject in school?"
Neema: "Ah....yeah"

It soon became clear that that was the only response we would get out of her. But then we taught her a simple card game and the 3 of us played cards and she caught on rather quick (in terms of which card was higher and the general concept of the game). In fact, she even learned on her own how to cheat (although not subtly).

Anyways, it was a nice place to stay during our first night of trekking regardless of Mazen's fainting episode later that evening and the fact that the owners charged us for everything from boiled water to electricity (a trend that would continue but took us by surprise that first night).

Mazen with the kids