Namche Bazaar is the largest town, and in most respects is the centerpiece of the Khumbu valley. My memory is that it hosts a weekly market for Tibetan goods on Saturdays, hence the “Bazaar”, but I saw no sign of that as we walked in around lunchtime (did Amazon put them out of business?). Anyway, today was an easy 3.5 miles and 2100’ of ascent. It only took 2.5 hours, and at least 20 minutes of that was spent doing paperwork at the two government checkpoints. The final hill up to Namche is a dusty trail through the woods, and a very good friend of mine says that this hill seems to be a common source of the Khumbu cough, so I wore a mask and tried not to breath too deeply. Since we’re still in the elevation range of the mountains I trained on in Jackson this winter, this wasn’t a problem.
Acclimatization is a slow process. At this point, there’s nothing to do except to let the body adapt, and that takes time. Thus the days are short. Here I am attempting the highest mountain in the world, and I’m walking slowly up an easy hill, and then calling it a day. It’s all very counterintuitive.
Namche exists where it is because it has a large and reliable spring. When I was here 8 years ago, this fountain was under construction.
My hotel room is at about 11,300’. We’ll stay here for 3 nights to acclimatize before moving on. This is the calm before the storm. My hotel room comes with an electric blanket, unlimited power and relatively good internet. Once I leave here, it will become much more primitive, but only for the next 7 weeks or so.
A lot of you have been emailing me questions, and I will attempt to answer all of them over the next few days in these posts. Email is the best way to reach me. Tetonclimber@gmail.com.
It’s tea time.
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