Namche Bazaar to Dole

Because of the elevation gain involved we needed to take our time to acclimate. This was all carefully planned out. Namche would be our first acclimation day. These days were not a complete rest day, but a short hike with the goal of hiking for a few hours up around 1500' in elevation and then returning to the starting place to sleep.

Mornings are a pretty special time in Nepal. Almost every lodge and home do a similar religious routine. Offerings of junipers branches are burned and the mantra "Om mani padme hum" is played. Some of the homes and lodges played this loud enough for us to hear outside as we walked past. After our breakfast, we headed up to the Everest View Lodge for our first acclimation hike.

We had some more delicious Lemon Ginger Honey tea at 12730'. There were tons of bees; they wanted their honey back and tormented Allix. They could smell her fear, and it only served to embolden them.

A popular topic of discussion since arriving in Kathmandu was; did we bring warm enough layers? All three of us have done a fair bit of mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest and the consensus before arriving in Nepal was that we would be fine. We now all had serious doubts. Namche was the last place to purchase gear so we decided we better take the opportunity and not chance it. We headed back down and went shopping.

This shopping trip took quite a while. There were many varying brands and qualities of jackets. Many were "north face" or similar copies. We settled on some ultra puffy down "mountain hardwear" jackets. Dinner was excellent. I had the dahl baht, which is the national dish of Nepal. Dahl means lentils, baht means rice. Most Nepalese eat this meal for lunch and dinner every day and whenever you order this meal anywhere you get free refills.

The next day our destination was Dole. We started outside of Namche and hiked along the traditional route to Everest Base Camp. The trail was very nice but there were quite a few people since everyone must pass through there.

After a short bit of hiking, we were rewarded with spectacular views followed by tea. Just after this point we split off the traditional Everest Base Camp Trail and took the road less traveled to Dole. I can't even imagine how hard it must be to build a trail like this in such a remote place. My guess lots of the supplies to build this portion were carried by animals just like this one.

After a long climb we were happy to stop for lunch. The views in this area were expansive in every direction. This was the first time I had seen a solar stove being used and thought it was a great idea. It make a lot of sense when you have little wood to burn and must carry propane for miles.

After lunch we descended back down through the forest and into the village of Phortse. Many people stopped here for the day but we still had another climb ahead of us. The forest was filled with rhododendrons and wildlife. We were lucky enough to come across a blue sheep. It was huge!

Soon after we saw an endangered musk deer. The reason they are endangered is quite sad - they are used in many Asian cosmetic products.

It was getting late when we arrived in Dole. We saw some of the first true Yaks.