Everest Trek Day 2: Phakding to Namche Bazaar

  Namche Bazaar, Nepal
Thursday, November 29, 2007

Phakding (2610m) -> Namche Bazaar (3420m)

So during the hike today we saw our first snow-capped peak which was a cause for some excitement:

Mountain view

But to make things even better we actually captured our first view of Everest today! But I'm getting ahead of myself already.

We had the notion that we would be carrying our own packs for our Everest Trek (ok, maybe more Mazen than myself). We are strong MEN afterall! Well, that notion ended rather quickly. Actually that notion ended at the end of our first trekking day as we told ourselves a much stronger version of: "To hell with carrying our own stuff!". So then we arranged for a porter. The porter that we arranged for was the brother-in-law of the owner of the lodge that we stayed at during our stay in Phakding. His name was Noori:

Noori

My pack weighed 17kg (a fact that I did not know until our flight the day before to Lukla) and Mazen's was about 10kg. So he carried all of that easily plus his own little pack.

Today would turn out to be quite a serious trek as there was some up-and-down in our path but ultimately we would be making a gain of about 800m in a single day!

It was a rather exhausting day but what made it worse for me was that I was having altitude headaches and also stomach problems (which I'm pretty sure were not altitude related). In any case, it was a hard enough day as it was but I knew that I was enthralled to have the porter along for the trek from now as as I'm positive I wouldn't have lasted the day carrying my own 17kg pack.

Fortunately, the trail was well layed-out for trekkers but make no mistake, it was an uphill slog:

Climbing our path

The scenary without question was nothing less than spectacular but again the people along the way and the towns were just as intriguing:

Mom and son

House with stone roof work

Nepalese woman

Anyways, like I said, we started to see higher mountains now as we worked our way along the river

Glacial river

, crossing various bridges

Me and one of the many bridges

, and started making the final exhaustive trek upwards to Namche Bazaar but we were blessed with a glorious view of Everest from a small view point. Even with that inspirational view it took some determination to make it the final few steps to Namche Bazaar:

Namche Bazaar view

We discovered quite early in our Everest Trek that towns would often surprise us in that we would turn around yet another harmless looking bend only to discover that we had finally made it to a particular place. Such was the case with Namche Bazaar. After a while, hope was fading with each successive switchback until we turn the final corner to find out that we had finally arrived in Namche Bazaar.

Namche Bazaar is an interesting place in itself in that it is nestled in a hillside with mountains all around (although we didn't realize how much the mountains surrounded us until things were clearer the following morning). It can also be an easy place for trekkers to hang out for a while as there are many place to stay and to eat. There are also a variety of trekking related shops and ever-present souvenir shops. There are also many trekking trails that can be hiked from here so it can be quite a hub of activity for trekkers.

Anyways, for us we were just happy to make it there and hopefully have a good night's sleep (even if I had an altitude-induced headache) to recover from the 800m climb in altitude that we experienced today.