More yak traffic

The most popular Nepalese beer with our group so far is called Everest. There’s a special edition out at the moment with a picture of a Sherpa called Nima Gombu on the label, celebrating the fact that he’s climbed Everest twelve times. His brother, Nima Temba, is our sirdar (chief Sherpa) and he’s also been up Everest. In all, their family of seven brothers has summitted Everest forty-seven times.

I’ve been wondering what Nima Temba makes of our little trip – it must seem a bit dull after going up Everest. I guess it’s probably similar for Andy though – trips like this are the bread and butter, with treats like the 8,000’ers being much less common.

Today we climbed up the valley from Monjo, past the confluence with the river and up to Namche Bazaar. The trail was very busy for the first hour or two this morning, but after our second break it seemed better, and we were able to go at our own pace. Before that we seemed to be stuck behind either a slow group or more yaks.

There are a lot more yaks on this trail than I remember from the Annapurna Circuit. There, we met the odd mule or donkey, but I don’t remember that many yaks. Here, our bags are being carried by yaks, at least for the moment – I think higher up the yaks may get a break and we’ll have to carry our own kit up to the high camps.

The trail yesterday and this morning were a bit too busy to enjoy, though the last hour climbing up into Namche was a little better. I’d never thought about the fact that we would be on the Everest Base Camp trail so much, or that it would be this busy. Apparently it’s worse than usual at the moment because of so many groups being stacked up in Kathmandu while the weather in Lukla improved. I guess I was spoiled with the solitude of the Pyrenees too.

The weather here hasn’t been great so far, but it’s a lot better than I had during the first week in the Pyrenees. It’s been raining by the time we’ve reached our lodges the last two days, though not heavily enough to need waterproofs. Nima Temba reckons it will be better after another day or two, which would be a relief, as we’re on a pretty tight schedule after the five days we lost in Kathmandu and can’t afford any bad weather days. It would be nice to see Everest at some point too!

Acclimatisation seems to be OK so far, though I guess it’s early days as we’re only at 3,400m. I’ve had a very slight headache but otherwise I’m feeling fine, and the climb up to Namche didn’t feel too hard at all.

I was talking to Andy last night and he said that when he was on the summit of Cho Oyu last year, he was probably the highest person in the world! It’s the sixth highest summit (at 8,201 m), and records show that there was no-one climbing the other five on the day he summitted, so there could have been no-one higher. That’s a pretty cool claim…