Travel Footprints

Trek the Himalayas Day #3: Namche Bazar, Syangboche, Khumjung
Pit Stop: Namche Bazar (2nd night)
Highest Elevation Reached: 3,790 m
Relative Oxygen Rate: 64% (assuming sea level at 100%)
Price of Mineral Water Bottle: 150 rupees/USD 2.15

We started having a bit of trouble sleeping through the night already because of headaches. By dawn, Mr. Rono had to rush to the bathroom to throw up and we all knew these are tell-tale signs of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) or also commonly known as altitude sickness. Before our breakfast of chicken noodle soup and egg, I urged Mr. Rono to do some deep breathing exercises with me (similar to what we do in yoga). In the end, he decided to stay behind in the hotel to rest while Chin and I go out to see the Sherpa Village in Khumjung as part of our ‘acclimatization’ climb.

Although we woke up with frosted hotel windows, the sun was out when we were about to leave for the acclimatization climb and the day was already getting warm.

But after some time, the wind started to pick up. Good thing we brought our windbreakers to wear during the day trek while immersing ourselves more on the Khumbu Region culture.

While in Syangboche, we managed to watch a cargo plane land on an airstrip and see a glimpse of the Mt. Everest peak for the very first time. But the weather has turned for the worse bringing in thick clouds from nowhere that virtually blinded our trail during the trek.

At some point, we had to ask ourselves do we go back to Namche Bazar or proceed to Khumjung?

But we decided we wanted to see more and really go to the Sherpa Village in Khumjung. A few more minutes of trekking uphills and downhills, we wandered into the community of Sherpas –

where we had lunch of vegetable roll (which looked a lot like a big empanada to me) with rice and vegetable soup. During lunch, we saw how cold it really was at 10 degrees Celsius and it’s only noon time!

And then it started to snow…

FRAAAAAAK! It was snowing and we were wearing our half-pants! We decided to wait it out a bit but after one hour there seems to be no stopping in sight –

We had to wait for the snow fall to stop in one of the Nepali houses just in front of the Hillary School where a lot of Sherpas first learned how to speak English. The school was established by Hillary, the first person to ever summit Mt. Everest. Eventually, we decided to just brave the snow and try to go back to Namche as fast as we can lest we end up being stuck in Khumjung for the night.

The sight of snow-capped mountains and pine trees and trail was actually breath-takingly beautiful if only we weren’t soooo cold! The trek back to Namche Bazar wasn’t easy but it sure was fun…and definitely memorable

If you don’t see the video, click here!