Namche Bazaar - 11,320 Ft.

Min and I left Phadking just after breakfast this morning to begin a five-hour ascent to Namche Bazaar. The scenery began to change almost immediately after moving on past Phadking. Yesterday, while hiking in from Lukla, the steep canyon opened up to form a wide, green valley at the bottom. Today the few valleys we passed through were very narrow. The canyon became higher and more rocky. Min and I crossed several times over metal suspension bridges spanning the the Dudh Kosi. On our way to Namche we passed through the towns of Toktok, Monju, and Jorsalle. In the villages we passed by the typical whitewashed hotels and guesthouses and a handful of homes built of crude bricks and adobe. Usually a Nepali man or an old woman would be sitting in the doorway staring back out at me, and smoke that smelled like a camp fire wafted out from inside. Min and I stopped in Jorsalle for a quick lunch of white rice and potatoes, then we hit the trail again. After Jorsalle the trail really begins to gain altitude; becoming a network of switchbacks climbing the steep canyon leading to Namche Bazaar. I talked for a while with a couple of French girls who I met while hiking earlier today. The two of them are studying agriculture at a university in Paris and are in Nepal as part of a year-long internship in Asia and South America. We talked about traveling, American movies, and skiing. It turns out that a day pass at a resort in the French Alps costs about half what one does at the resorts surrounding Salt Lake. In the past I've thought about doing a trip to snowboard at different resorts in the Alps, but I always thought it would be much too expensive. Maybe it would be a lot more reasonable than I used to think it was.

Pretty much anything that is consumed in the villages in the Himalayas has to be brought in on the back of a porter. While hiking during the last two days I've passed hundreds of porters hiking to and from Lukla, most of whom are carrying over one-hundred pounds. I've passed porters piled high with heavy boxes, porters carrying giant bags of rice or grain, and porters carrying seven or eight giant wooden four-by-fours to be used in construction in one of the villages. As the porters walk most of them are bent over at nearly a ninety-degree angle, weighed down by their huge loads. Many porters carry a crude wooden cane to use as support, and rest their load on the cane when they need to take a break for a few minutes.
Min said that most times, after carrying a load to Namche, a porter will have problems moving his neck and back. For a trip from Lukla to Namche Bazaar, which usually takes a porter two days, the porter will make 14 rupees per kilogram. That's equivlant to about ten dollars for a load of one-hundred pounds. The money also has to cover the porter's expenses. After paying for a few cheap meals and a place to sleep at night, the average porter is lucky to come away with five dollars per day.We made it to Namche at about 3:00 this afternoon. The town is quite a sight. Namche Bazaar is built in a small valley that forms a semi-circle at the top of the canyon. It's as if someone built half of a huge football stadium and then lined the sides with potato fields and whitewashed guesthouses. In all the pictures I've seen of Namche the scenery is amazing, but unfortunately the clouds covered it all up this afternoon. June is the beginning of the rainy season in the Himalayas and is not the best time for spectacular views. I knew that when I booked the trek, but this was the only time that would fit into my travels this summer, so it was June or nothing. The morning I flew into Lukla the sky was uncharacteristically clear and I could see several snowy Himalayan peaks even after I got off the airplane. Hopefully the clouds will clear away by tomorrow morning and I'll be able to see the trademark Himalayan views that I came for.
I checked into Namche Bazaar's Hotel Everest this afternoon, crashed onto my bed, and went right to sleep. Four hours later a knock on the door woke me up and I headed downstairs for a pizza dinner. Min fell asleep earlier today and right now, at 9:30, he's still out cold. Hiking up here, even if it's only for a few hours, really takes it out of you. In a few days we'll have reached much higher altitudes and it will be a lot more difficult. I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to hike up there without any problems, but I might take a lot of long naps during the next two weeks.

I'm really hoping for clear skies tomorrow...