13 March
(Day 3 of trekking)
“Day 3 saw us wake to a very brisk -6 and after dressing and preparing our packs for today’s trek we headed across for a great breakfast of hot porridge and tea.
Today was an acclimatisation day designed to help us stabilise before we head up to our next location tomorrow. This process includes a 2 hour trek and ascent of +/- 500m and then a descent back down to our starting point in Namche.
Our first point of call was the Tenzing Norgay memorial park, the memorial remembers Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who summited Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953. They were the first people ever to achieve this feat. From the memorial we got our first view of Everest peak which was amazing. You can also see other peaks at or over 6,000m including AMA Dablam.
From the memorial park it was onwards and upwards (extremely steep) to the Sherpa Panorama Hotel from where you can get 360deg views of the valley, including Everest. At an altitude of 3,860m it was almost humbling to look at what nature has given this region, images that photo’s cannot do justice too.
After a good hour and a quarter of enjoying the views, drinking coffee and eating Himalayan bread with jam, the weather turned very quickly, the clouds covered all the peaks and we started to head down.
On the way down we stopped at Sagarmartha Next.
‘Located at Syangboche (near Namche Bazar), en route the Mount Everest Base camp, the initiative develops a model of sustainable tourism for mountain areas across Nepal, in order to bring awareness to waste management and also to support regional stakeholders in finding innovative and sustainable solutions.
The Saraf Foundation has funded and constructed the center in an effort to preserve the local culture and traditions in the Khumbu region, which is being thrown off balance due to the exponential increase in tourist numbers.’
On the way back from Base Camp we will all pick up a 1kg bag of recyclable plastic and metal and carry it to Lucla from where it will be transferred to Kathmandu and recycled.
The trip down took maybe a third of the time it took us to ascend and we got back just after midday for a terrific lunch, followed by washing of clothes and then free time to explore Namche.
As always, the day concluded with a no protein high carb meal, a hot chocolate, boiling of water for tomorrow and the now well established card games.”
– Tony
