Day 12: Jorsalle–Lukla

Day 12 - Oct 11, Fri 

Jorsalle (9022’/2750m) – Lukla (9,300'/2,840m
Approx 6 hrs 9 miles

Final hike day! We did the water chemistry for the last time that day! We were so proud at having been very environmentally friendly. Throughout the trek we hardly bought any bottled water which really adds to the plastic waste. After breakfast we headed out for Lukla.

We took our final day picture sitting on the bench beside the river and had all our our fingers and both our legs out to denote Day 12!! Shachin and I went down to the gorgeous river and enjoyed sitting on the rocks and admiring views we would not be seeing for a long time!

Soon after we set off on the beautiful trek alongside our lovely river and mostly through the forest. The trail hugged the meandering river and revealed lovely vistas around river bends with the glistening silvery water, the rocky beaches, and the stately conifers clustered on the mountain sides!  There were brightly colored roofed houses littered along the way!

Gorgeous! I really wanted to absorb the views and etch them somehow in my mind since this was our last day in such ethereal beauty!
Most of the way we were singing along with the songs that I was playing on my phone. It was all very relaxed and enjoyable. We stopped for tea and lunch at a small village just as the trail was getting ready to leave the Dudh Kosi behind to climb higher towards Lukla. They took a really long time getting our food. While we were waiting I went and bought some nice oranges from a shop nearby. Just a little later to our surprise a herd of jopyuk overturned a  bowl of oranges perched outside on a table! 

A little ways up we came across a fresh guava stall! We bought some yummy fresh guava’s and enjoyed hogging them while walking.

We also met an Indian film director who said he was shooting a move about the trek. Maybe you will see us on TV ;-)  The rest of the hike was uneventful and mostly uphill.

We finally reached Lukla and our lodge and the End of our 12 day Hike to Everest Base Camp! Quite befittingly the first thing you see as you enter this city is a giant prayer wheel! We danced with joy and the thrill of having achieved such a major task! We had realized our dream! We felt such a surge of fulfillment and joy over our accomplishment! We danced to Cheykyo Cheykyo and another Nepali “thumba” song that Sanjiv had found. It was also a tad bit depressing L Our Lodge was really luxurious as compared to the ones we had experienced on the trek. The biggest luxury was having running hot water showers! It was so refreshing and relaxing! We took showers and then headed down to Lukla village. The girls went to a Coffee shop and had really expensive coffee ;-) But the ambience was nice. I dragged Anisha along to do a bit of shopping. I wanted to get T-shirts that said Everest Base Camp instead of Kala Pathar. I found some and got some other trinkets. We then went to “Wave’s Pub” and had a few drinks. Anisha and I danced a Lot. Sanjiv was not in his usual high spirits. It must be the thought of it all ending…

A little later at night Revant and Tej also came over to the bar and we danced some more with them. 

We also wrote about the details of our trip along with the all our names on the wall of the pub! It is now inscribed on the walls for eternity and for all to see! We were all quite drunk and the walk back to the hotel was quite crazy!

At the hotel we had dinner and the famous Thumba drink! The chicken was delicious! The drink was like nothing we had ever had before and Quite Awesome! It was such a unique experience. Thumba is an alcoholic beverage (a.k.a. "warm beer") that was served in a plastic mug with a large straw. The mug was filled with millet seed. They poured hot water and "Raksi" (a local millet-based alcohol) into the canister over the millet and let it soak for awhile. Then it was ready to drink. Once you hit bottom, the waiter would come and "refresh" your drink with another pot of hot water. This was quite a social drinking experience! Very enjoyable and a befitting end to a Marvelous trek!

We met up with the porters and Revant and partied one last night with them. It was quite heart wrenching cause we had really formed such strong bonds especially with Revant and Dunbar. We thanked each and every one of them for all for their great work and support over the last 2 weeks. Dunbar would be travelling with us to Kathmandu but the others we would leave behind in Lukla.  We drank beer and soda together for the last time.
That night we all slept very well. 

The next day we took the early flight out of Lukla. Saying Good Bye to Revant was the hardest. Seated inside the plane we saw the last glimpse of him outside and felt very sad.

This marked the end of a truly  once in a Lifetime experience that was exceptional and absolutely amazing. Infinitely gorgeous, inordinately challenging, this adventure will forever be etched in our memories and the bonds formed with the friends we shared this with will be everlasting!

 END Of FABULOUS TREK! Back to Day 1

Day 11: Namche Bazaar–Jorsalle

Day 11 - Oct 10, Fri

Namche Bazaar (11,285'/3,440m) – Jorsalle (9022’/2750m) 

Approx 2 hrs 3.0 miles

This was the easiest day of the whole trek. We woke up lazily and when we came down for Tea I saw Revant’s Down jacket just lying on one of the benches in the dining room – in plain sight of everyone. It was a Marmot and must be quite expensive. I could not resist the urge to play a prank on him ;-) I took it and I hid it in Anisha’s room. Later he came hunting for it – looking very worried. We said we had not seen it. He went away and checked with all the other porters and owners! When we came down for breakfast and he still had not found it he really did look worried! Finally just before starting off I told him I had been successful in catching the thief and had  pay $200 to get it back ;-)

That morning Shachin and I made another trip to the Sagarmatha National Park Headquarters to watch the  views of Everest one last time. It was really pretty but seemed pale after having watched these same mountains up close and really magnificent! We came at a lucky time when they were unpacking new statues of Hillary and Tenzing that would be installed there. We soaked in the views of Everest and Lhotse and Lhotse Shar and Nuptse and felt sad that this would be the last time we would be seeing them on this trek. It was lovely!

Some time later we headed to Jorsalle. The first hour was knee crunching downhill – steep, with many many steps and we were all surprised how we could possibly have climbed up this torturous path, just on our 2nd day of hiking? This same path that had killed us as we puffed and panted on the way up was now crushing our knees on the way down!  

We trekked beside the frothy Dudh Kosi  and at one point passed this beautiful lodge that had gorgeous flowers! We reached the “Friendship Lodge, Restaurant and bar” in time for lunch. The lodge and our rooms were really charming! We remembered it from our way up.

It was the most delightful lodge of the entire trek – perched beside the mischievous white waters of the river and overlooking the forest on the other side of the mountain. We saw some goats grazing on the banks. Lunch was out on the patio with the river as our backdrop. The windows in the rooms also had gorgeous views of the river.

That evening at Jorsalle turned out to be one of the most memorable and fun evenings of the trek! We ordered some beer with our food and Sanjiv arranged for music and we all danced our hearts out in the small cozy dining area! We asked the porters Tej, Vijay, Mann and Shyam to join as well as Revant and Dunbar and the lodge owners and their little kid. The only other people at the lodge  were 3 Russian trekkers who were not very friendly. We danced to “Theykyo Thekyo” and  another dance song that I can’t remember. Singing and dancing with the whole group was such a great bonding experience! Tej was unanimously declared the best dancer! What a thoroughly enjoyable evening! 

NEXT - Day 12 - Oct 11, Fri –Jorsalle (9022’/2750m) – Lukla (9,300'/2,840m

Day 10: Pheriche-Namche Bazaar

Day 10 - Oct 9, Thu

Pheriche (14,340’/4,371 m)  - Namche Bazaar (11,285'/3,440m)
Approx 7 hrs 12.5 miles

 This was the longest day of the descent. Unfortunately we could not break up our journey down into even hiking days. The days from Gorak Shep to Pheriche and from Pheriche to Namche were very long and then from Namche to Jorsalle would be very short and Jorsalle to Lukla would be relatively short too. The reason was altitude and quality of lodges. We preferred to chug onto Namche rather than spend another night in the miserable guest house in Tengboche. And on the way back you can make these choices.

I woke up early and got some beautiful pics of the sunrise over Pumori and Labouche Peak on fire! Very rewarding! After breakfast we started our long hike down. On this trek nothing was easy. If we weren’t panting on a lung-searing uphill we were suffering the knee-crunching downhill. Urmi had the most problems in steep downhill’s but Revant was always by her side to help her down.

The best part was that the views did not pale or become stale. You enjoy totally different views going the opposite way because you rarely look back on the way up. We had Kamtega and Thamserku in front of us dazzling in the October sunshine as we hiked along Dudh Kosi river. 

As we got closer to Tengboche the mountains started getting greener and we could see some shrubs. It was very picturesque!

This was also the day we had the run in with a group of Yaks. We realized that while on the ascent, waiting for a Yak group to pass us gave us a chance to catch our breath – having to walk behind a group on the descent was downright painful.

 We tried to find a patch of trek where you could run faster than the whole group of Yaks to get ahead of them. So at one point with Dunbar in the lead followed by Urmi, Anisha, Sanjiv, me, Shachin and Revant taking the rear, we decided to do just that. Dunbar led us up a higher path and we had to literally run really fast past the whole group. Urmi, Anisha and Sanjiv made it past but on the last bit I just couldn’t catch my breath and had to give up and let the herd pass us by.  Fortunately Revant was with us and he was on the vigil for another patch. Some time later he spotted one and we made a second attempt at out running the beatss! This time we were able to safely cross! Yayyy! Quite an adventure!

 We realized the volatility of human memory as we traversed what must have been the steep descent (now ascent) from Tengboche to Deboche that we had covered a few days prior.

It was a reminder that just because we were retracing our steps we were in no way the master of the terrain or the altitude. The ascent left me breathless and dazed and by the time we got to Tengboche I was totally exhausted. I somehow had the impression that we would be stopping for lunch there but was informed that we had to go another 30-40 mins to Phungi Thanga! I was quite bummed. Shachin gave me some snacks to keep me going.

At Phungi Thanga we had a good lunch but the trail became more difficult and draining after that.  

This last leg was relentless and never ending – at every switchback we hoped it would be the last only to find another after it. I did have some interesting conversations with Revant when he told me about his lovely wife and kid and life in the village and career choices! We finally got to the now familiar paved brick road to Namche and our lodge “The Nest”.

At the lodge we were not fortunate enough to get the lovely rooms we had got on the way up. We had hoped for a good hot water bath but regrettably there was no running hot water. Upon request we got some buckets of lukewarm water. At dinner we ordered wine and “Teachers” whiskey. We wanted to treat Revant and Dunbar and insisted they dine with us at our table. They really enjoyed the drinks. We also ordered chicken and non veg for the first time! We were surprised to see the South African couple there. It turned out that beyond Dingboche the husband developed some Heart issues and they had to turn back. They seemed disappointed but were happy to see us. We had a good time sharing some wine and stories! It was a lovely relaxed evening!

NEXT - Oct 10, Fri – Day 11 Namche Bazaar (11,285'/3,440m) – Jorsalle (9022’/2750m)