Trekking Sagarmatha National Park (Day 3-4)

On the third day of my trek, my guide, Bishnu and I did an acclimation climb in which we ascended a couple hundred meters and then descended back to where we started (in this case, back to Namche Bazar). We hiked to the Everest View Hotel which is at 3880m/12729'. As the name implies, we were able to get a glimpse of Mount Everest from here. However, due to the distance and size of other nearby mountains, Everest does not appear to be the tallest from this vantage point. In the picture below, Everest is taller of the two smaller more rounded peaks that are completely covered in snow.



The hike up involved climbing the equivalent of 100 flights of stairs and round trip we hiked just under 5 miles. On the steep descent back to Namche, I took this photo from above the village.



Up until this point, I've only talked about the trekking. Since most days only require 5-6 hours of hiking, that leaves plenty of time that needs to be filled. Most of the time I was able to find other Trekkers to talk to. Besides the Trekkers that I already mentioned, I met wonderful people from France, Sweden, Ireland, and South Africa among others. Also, when you are in Namche and some of the other larger villages, there are plenty of shops, bakeries and bars to hang out in, many of the later two offering free wifi so you can stay connected in this very remote and hard to access part of the world. All the lodges also contain a large dinning hall in which to eat or hang out in and read. One thing you don't do is spend time in your room which is often just a small box shaped space with a single bed or two that had no bathroom and is normally extremely cold due to the lack of any heating source and the drafty windows.



This brings me to what has been the most challenging part of this adventure.... nighttime. I knew from prior experience that sleeping in high altitude environments can cause insomnia, however, this was the first time that I've dealt with what I will call the quadruple whammy of high altitude, extreme cold (below zero), crappy thin foam mattresses (when they were new that might have been four inches, but after who knows how many months or years of use, they are more like 1-2 inches in the middle where it counts), and a super constrictive mummy style sleeping bag. For me, all these elements resulted in my getting 1-2 hours of sleep per night and lying awake rather uncomfortable the rest of the time. Now I should add that there are some factors that added to my discomfort that would not apply to others. One key factor is that I can't sleep on my back, so I sleep on my side. If you sleep on your back, you will likely fare much better than I did because your weight is more evenly distributed thus decreasing the need for a thicker mattress and the mummy style sleeping bags are best suited to sleep in this position. Also, because I was sleeping on my side most of my weight was born on my hip and shoulder. Thus, I needed to turn over frequently onto my other side once my shoulder or hip became sore due to the hard surface. This was very difficult to do in the mummy style sleeping bag. It's like trying to maneuver in a straight jacket. I literally would get short of breath just trying to turn over in the thin air. For all of these reasons I was dreading going to bed each night.



On the fourth day of trekking, we hiked to Debuche. We had actually planned to hike to Tengboche which has a large monastery but the lodges were all full, so we continued on for another 30 minutes. It was another beautiful day for trekking with clear blue skies and plenty of sunshine. We covered about 7.5 miles and climbed the equivalent of 186 flights during this up and down day of hiking (we probably descended at least 140 flights).

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