First
Day
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First
Day
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At Kathmandu Airport Gorkha Airlines were very strict - they counted not only the weight of our kitbags but also that of our 'hand luggage' (day sacks), plus our various sticks, umbrellas and trekking-poles. They demanded penalties for an excess of 66 kilos. Andy was furious. Each of us immediately denied that it was my kitbag that had caused the extra weight, while secretly feeling guilty. Nearly all of us had squeezed a bit extra in. But the flight was a very smooth one and took only 25 minutes to get from Kathmandu (about 4500 feet) to Lukla (9350 feet), with some grand mountain views en route. |
Arrival at Lukla airport |
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Two of the female porters |
Soon we joined up with a big army: the 20-30 porters who will carry our provisions, tents and kitbags (leaving us with our day sacks). About a quarter of them were female, usually about 15-20 years old. They get paid the same and are supposed to carry the same loads, but their loads always look smaller! The Everest trail, the main trekker route, is due north from Lukla. Mera Peak is in fact almost due east of Lukla, and you could get to it directly via a high pass called the Zatraya La. But this would mean going right up to 15,000 feet right straight away - very debilitating. Our route had been chosen to take in lots of good acclimatising walking along the remote Hinku river valley. This runs north-south some distance to the east of here, so our route is to go first south, then east over a low pass to get into the valley, then northwards up the valley, curling around Mera to the north and east and attacking it from the preferred north-eastern side. |
For a first day it was quite tough walking. First we went down 2000 feet, then we ascended 2000 feet, and then we went up-and-down.
Colin and I soon split off as a slow team. Colin is about 25% slower at present because of his injury, but we were accustomed to walking slowly and to interact more with the environment. Few people will spot more bird species than Colin. Scott accompanied us for a while to see what this 'going slowly' experience was like.
Even so, at the end of the first day there was a big gap in arrival times, which disturbed the fast group - they were genuinely fast, and driven more by a sense of getting there. They viewed life as climbers, wanting to get to the mountain, whereas we were out to enjoy the trek itself. It will take us a while to appreciate each other's point of view.
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Our first bridge, a pretty one |
After all the ascending and descending we ended up sleeping the night just a couple of hundred feet lower than Lukla and in the grounds of a lodge. We ate the first of many excellent dinners prepared by the Sherpa cooks . We were delighted it was Dahl Bhatt, i.e. rice, lightly curried vegetables and lentils - the staple diet of the Sherpas and porters. |
Knowing that Scott is a vegetarian the cooks will cook vegetarian meals most of the time, occasionally with tuna as an optional extra, or as part of a sauce, but meat will be absent almost always. Most nights our meal will finished off by a soupcon of tinned fruit, but tinned fruit with a difference: it will be warm. The cooks were instructed that all water for Clients must always be boiled first. Of course, tinned fruit contains water.
We were up very early and have had a pretty long day, but most of us couldn't get to sleep when we returned to our tents.
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Andy, cocooned in his sleeping bag in the lodge because of problems with his tent, was neatly sealed off from the noise. As sleepless hour followed sleepless hour, we became very jealous. Instead of counting sheep, I plotted revenge, and eventually did get a couple of hours sleep.
