Good-Bye Old Friend!
We awoke at 6:30 am slightly disappointed: Raju had said that given good weather, he would wake us up at 5:30 to steal a glimpse of Mt. Everest. We assumed the gloomy weather had persisted and we wouldn't get to see her one more time, our consolation prize for missing Gokyo Ri.
However, we were promptly snapped out of our disappointment by a knock on the door! Raju said the clouds were clearing and if we hurried, we'd be able to make it. We dashed out the door and walking the 10 minutes to the national park and stood in the clearing.
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| Ever modest, Mt. Everest was concealed in clouds. |
Disappointed, we took turns peering through the camera lens to try and spot her summit. She must have felt us watching and suddenly, the clouds parted and we saw her, cloudless for the first time, waving us off!
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| Good-bye Mt. Everest! You've been spectacular. |
Happy that we had one last look, we headed back down and enjoyed our classic breakfast: Matt eating Tibetan bread and Holly enjoying Chapati with honey.
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| A nice light breakfast, similar to pita or naan. |
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Fried dough, similar to a Beavertail, Matt
often enjoyed it with Masala tea. |
On our way out of Namche, we took a quick stroll through the Saturday market to see the wares on display. It was mostly a food market and, although full from breakfast, we were nearly tempted by some cakes and biscuits on sale.
The route back to Phakding was the same one we had taken 2 weeks earlier. The sun was shining and the weather was hot, it was a pleasant enough walk down. Holly had her camera out, ready to snap away but, to be honest, everything seems less spectacular further down once you've walked with the mountains. Happy enough just to walk and chat, that's what we did.
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| More beautiful monuments lined our path. |
Lining our way down were giant monoliths, something we forgot to mention on the walk up. These massive boulders were hand carved with Buddhist mantras and then painted so they stood out in the foliage. These became commonplace between Lukla and Namche, popping up occasionally higher up as well.
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| Holly for scale in front of a Mani Stone. |
We arrived in our (now) familiar tea house in Phakding. We settled in for the night, laying a round of a new card game we discovered (66- if anyone knows how to play properly, we'd love a proper lesson, we learnt from Wikipedia!). The weather still looked bleak and there had been no flights out of Lukla that day, we went to bed slightly worried about what would happen if there were no flights on the 17th...
Altitude: 2610m
Altitude lost: 830m
Hours trekked: 5
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