Shivalaya to Namche Bazar – 28.4.2016

After taking the bus from Kathmandu, we arrived at Shivalaya in the evening. Since we did not want to continue hiking in the night we went to the first Guest House to stay the night. When we ordered tea there the owner brought us a really big pot at a really high price so after that we learned and first looked at the prices and started bartering for the prices.

Our group at the beginning consisted of Tije from the Netherlands and Cory from Canada. On the way we met a lot of other people, for example Alejandro from Mexico and Arthur from Russia. They both were very good at haggling and our groups kind of merged. Of course there were a lot more people who we met from time to time, depeding on the guest house we were staying in.

The first days were really hard because the whole way to Lukla consists of going up and down and no flat hiking in sight. We could really see how high we were with how much the whole area changed. In the valleys there were lush forests and on the top of passes and mountains there mostly were no trees in sight. Also in the valleys there were whole villages while in the higher areas you could sometimes only find a single house where a family lived. Most of thouse houses were also guest houses.

While in the beginning therer were normal pathways, the closer we got to Namche the more bridges there were, crossing over big rivers. Sometimes it was really scary to cross them when a herd of animals was crossing at the same time.

When we got to Lukla, a few of the people we met on the way went up to the town while we continued on without stopping. Arthur had bought shoes in Kathmandu that were totally broken by now and had to buy new ones, and others also had noticed on the way that they were missing Equipment.

On the way up from Lukla to Namche there were noticably more people who were taking tours and hade porters carry their stuff. It was quite funny passing them buy with their small day backpacks, huffing and puffing up the mountain while we had the training by now and could now easily carry the 10-15 kg backpacks up. So it turned out that hiking to Lukla was a very good idea and prepared our muscles for the hiking in the everest region.

Also, we discovered fried mars bars. It has a looot of calories and is one of the sweetest things we ever tasted but since we needed the calories it was not even a guilty pleasure.