Asia Adventure 2012: Namche Bazar to Tashinga

Happy International Women's Day!!!

We started our day very early when we heard a knock at the door around 4:15am. It was a bit early for the 6:30am wake up Kagi suggested. As it turned out it was not our door, but rather it was someone rousing the South Korean movie folks and seeing as our room was located right under the pathway between both sections of our hotel, it was clearly a traffic jam to the restaurant, not to mention the clanging of pots and scurrying around making breakfast. So we had no luck trying to get back to sleep.

When we finally did get our wake-up call, we had been awake for awhile. Despite the clouds coming in last night, it was totally clear, so we had a coffee to warm up and headed back to the museum to catch the sunrise. It was chilly and it took a while, but finally, the sun found its way over the mountain. But by that time, it was way too bright to catch properly in a photo. While we were waiting, we watched the helicopters take the South Korean movie folks to their location which is a two-day trek from Namche Bazar.

After breakfast and packing up, we headed to Tashinga starting on a path straight up to the rustic dirt-strip airport. Rather than continuing along our merry way, we made a short digression to the Everest Summit hotel where we had another amazing view of Everest Peak. Each time we have an amazing view, I think it’s the best yet, then there’s another one ahead.

Back on the original track we trekked and presto another gorgeous view of Everest; this one with a foreground of yaks grazing on a hill. A little farther on, we passed by a memorial for 2 community rescuers who lost their lives in a rescue attempt on Mount Ama Dablam. I built an Inuksuk at this location.

We arrived at the gorgeous Khumjung village located inside a bowl with peaks surrounding it on all sides. Walking into the village the first site is the Khumjung school founded by Sir Edmund Hillary (first person to summit Everest along with Tenzing Norgye) and supported by many countries; Canada- Teachers hostel cum adult education centre, Korea – Computer Classroom, Japan – Student hostel, UK, etc. Adult, elementary and high schools are all located here.

We enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Hidden Village Lodge and Restaurant were we had soup (I had garlic and Greg had mushroom) and spring rolls which were the size of a pizza pocket. It’s hard to tell what size the dish will be.

Finally after a rigorous ascent this morning, we got to descend into the valley to our hotel in Tashinga, another Everest Summit Lodge. This one perched on the outskirts of Tashinga on a beautiful property overlooking the valley floor way below. We were greeted with tea and Greg’s favourite, carrot cake. Dinner was an amazing Tibetan meal starting with clear tomato soup, tender beef, rice with mushroom sauce, vegetable curry, cabbage salad and a delicious chocolate cake. They gave us some hot water bottles to put under the covers. This hotel has a tankless water heater system, but it was diabled during the off-season, they were using solar power. Nevertheless, we had hot water on demand… how nice!

Each night of our trek, I’ve been doing a slide show for Kagi and Purba of the day’s photos. This evening, they asked to see pictures of Canada and fortunately, I had some BC, Newfoundland, Nunavut Niagara Falls, and Ottawa photos to show them. They were quite fascinated and we enjoyed a chuckle about the Rocky Mountains and how small they seem compared to the Himalayas.