DAY 260 (Wednesday 18 April 2012)

Day 10 of Everest Trek – DEBOCHE to NAMCHE

Woohoo we had a lie in today as we were only heading back to NAMCHE for a 2 night stop.  The lodge at DEBOCHE was one of the best ones that we have stayed in and was certainly one of the warmest.  We eventually set off from the Rivendell lodge just around 0800 hours and the first part (as usual) was uphill towards TENGBOCHE, when we go to TENGBOCHE (about half an hour later) we visited the Monastery  and were able to actually go inside but only once you had taken off your shoes.

Entrance to Tengboche Monastery

Inside there were some monks that were praying and we also got to see the head Lama.  After spending about 15 minutes looking around and taking photo’s we started on the trek back to NAMCHE.  I was actually quite impressed as to how quick we were doing our walk as we got to our lunch stop PUNGECHANGA in pretty good time, yes the lunch stop was around 1000 hours but when hasn’t it been!!!!

It was nice to sit down and have a break after coming downhill but in most cases you go down to go back up.  The uphills for me are a killer as in most cases I prefer downhill but even going down was taking it’s toll on my old knees.

Eventually the hills stopped and we were basically back on the level and we knew we were close to NAMCHE, however we stopped for a short break and took in the view to find a woman coming up on to the main track from God only knows where, Charlie and Kaji had a look to see where she had come from but there was no plausible place other than goat tracks, she was on her own carrying one heck of a rucksack, but at least she headed back to NAMCHE.

We finally got to NAMCE just after 1300 hours, another good time; we got booked into our rooms, sorted ourselves out before heading for a nice hot shower and putting some of our clothing in for laundry as they could have walked to the laundry by themselves.

Tomorrow is a rest day for us so it’s a little bit of shopping (for me anyway) and hopefully we shall get to go and see the museum by the Army Camp.  Oh and the most important thing to do tomorrow will be to have chocolate cake at the bakery.