16.01.10 – 7.47pm (2.06pm UK)

Welcome back! Thanks for all your comments, they’ve been great to read – a touch of home, here in the heart of the Himalayas, you’ve no idea how wonderful that is for us. We’re all having a wonderful adventure, but I know I’m not alone when I say how much I miss my family. I carry each of them very close to my heart, every day & night.

I’m going to just start today’s blog, if I may, by introducing you to the other members of the team. We’re a bit of a family unit now & we’ve come to know many of each other’s ‘isms’, which is making the trek even more enjoyable.

Ladies first, as is the correct etiquette: we have Dr Jess & Elizabeth. Guys: we have John, Trev, Mark & Chris. We can fill you in on their ‘isms’ when we get home!

OK, back to today. Up at 7.00am, bags packed ready for the yaks by 8.00am, breakfasted & ‘tally ho’ at 9.00am. Today, Saturday, is the official market day in Namche Bazaar & the route we took out of the village yesterday on our walk to the sunrise view & Everest View Hotel was full of market activity so we took an alternative route out.

This was nice actually, because it took us through an area which we would otherwise not have seen – an area where daily the local people sell their produce: yaks cheese, garlic, oranges, butter, rice, herbs &, of course, a small collection of western goods like batteries, torches, beer & – randomly – Horlicks! I really fancied stopping to buy some of that… you can’t beat it before bedtime!

The first part of our trek took us to where we would be lodging for the evening – Kenjoma at 3550m. It was a relatively uneventful journey with some fairly harsh uphill climbs, but they were short & on the whole the trek was kind to us. We stopped briefly to look around a Sherpa Museum, which was very, very interesting – it was an old Sherpa cottage that has been preserved & opened as a museum. It contained an array of original artefacts, the uses of which were explained & demonstrated to us in great detail. The owner of the museum – & as it turned out the last inhabitant while it was still a house – is a keen photographer, so after the museum we had a look around next door where he was displaying many of his photos. They ranged from historic images showing authentic Nepalese to scenic images pulling in all the great Himalayan mountains – the greatest of course being Everest, for which a whole room was dedicated.

As we left & continued on our way, the views continued to take our breath away & Everest kept getting tantalisingly closer. The mountain face on the opposite side of the valley to which we were walking was just so clear in its detail. We stood in awe of the infinite detail that was right before our eyes, feeling close enough to reach out & touch. We all took copious amounts of pictures, mine with every intention of joining them to make large panoramic spreads to show their awesome detail, but somehow I feel the true magnificence will only be able to live inside our memories.

After eating lunch, we headed off for the second part of the day: a trek to Khumjung at 3780m. The trek to it was hard I’d say – not as hard as the previous day, but it felt hard. The saving grace was that it only lasted for an hour & a half. Khumjung is a town built in an area that was once covered by a glacier. The glacier has since melted, leaving an abundance of rocks behind. Over many hundreds of years, the town has grown & until last year was a busy lodging town for trekkers on their way to Base Camp. For some reason (maybe down to the poor technological facilities), it seems that trade has now moved to Namche Bazaar (where we have stayed for the last two nights). As a consequence the town is now very quiet. There are many, many buildings around, & they are all very neat with their painted green roofs (a Hillary initiative last year), but a lot of them are now empty with the owners working away in Kathmandu.

We were supposed to be visiting the Khumjung Monastery, the Khunde Hospital & lastly the Hillary School at Khumjung. However, the Monastery was locked & the bloke with the key was nowhere to be found, so we moved on to the Khunde Hospital. This was excellent. Built in 1966 thanks to the remarkable efforts of Sir Edmund Hillary (who, I am finding, was a phenomenal man & who has done so much for the Nepalese people – changed their lives really, beyond any way they would have ever imagined. I shall certainly be reading more about him when I get home to the UK), this hospital receives zero funding from the Nepalese government yet serves thousands of mountain people.

We were fortunate enough to find the doctor who runs the hospital at home (the hospital closes on Saturday!) & he very kindly showed us around. This little brick walled, tin roofed building, has a consultancy room, a delivery room with incubation, a small lab, a drug store, an x-ray cum ultra-sound scanning room & a short stay room with 2 beds. In another building it has enough beds for up to 12 patients to long stay, should the need arise. Totally funded by donations & fund raising by the Hillary Trust, this little hospital in the middle of nowhere is amazing. I just wanted to donate all the money I had left to them!

Because the hospital visit took so long – because we had so many questions! – the sun had disappeared behind the mountain shadowing the village & the temperature started to plummet. Everybody layered up quickly & to be honest didn’t pay as much attention as we could have to the Hillary School – our attention was on (a) getting back before we froze & (b) getting back before it was dark because a lot of the route was ice underfoot & we were worried about our footing.

However, we had a quick look around the school & made it back to the lodge just in time as the sun set on the horizon.

Tonight’s lodge is good – sadly no internet, so you’ll be reading this a day later – but it has a television on which the Sherpas insist on watching tail to tail Bollywood at full blast! Television, humph – just what we’ve come to get away from. Nevermind, when In Rome…

The evening meal was yet another inventive combination of potatoes, eggs, cheese & vegetables. I’ve a feeling there’ll be another severe eastern wind this evening/tomorrow…

Signing off then. Hopefully I’ll get a good selection of pictures posted tomorrow as the internet is good at Tengboche & we have a ‘half day’. So, unless our Sherpa leader has any of his ‘optional extras’ planned, I’ll have some time to compile & upload.