End of day 5:
We approached like cowboys riding in
on a nearly dead town. It was silent except for the wind whipping
against the prayer flags. The town should've had an Old West name
like Misery or Tombstone but instead it was called Dingboche.
Dingboche is small and simple. There are couple general shops, a
bakery (there's always a bakery), two obnoxiously overpriced “internet
cafes”, and a few teahouses.
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| Welcome to Dingboche Population: 201 Elevation: 4530 m/ 14800 ft |
We settled on the first one we came
to, creatively named Dingboche Guesthouse and Restaurant. Again, we
negotiated free accommodation for buying all our meals here. It was
a plain guesthouse. The bed rooms were small and smelled of their
thin plywood walls. No running water and no electricity. The common
room was a good size. It consisted of a small stove-heater in the
center. Each wall was lined with a pillow-covered bench. Each
bench had a table in front of it. If this were an Old West town
there'd of been a big bear or bull skull on the wall, but we were in
Nepal so instead they hung the skull of a yak.
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| The common room at Dingboche Guesthouse |
If I was a cowboy, the Sherpas would
be the Indians acting as friendly guides and liaisons to their native
land. Sherpa people lead simple but not easy lives. It's always
cold but the Sherpas never look bothered by it. Perhaps it's because
they've inhabited the eastern Khumbu region for hundreds of years.
Although most Sherpas don't get much of a formal education, they all
speak English (a valuable and necessary skill for the tourism
industry). After generations of living at and adapting to high
elevation, the Sherpas have the ability to perform strenuous labor
with less oxygen, making them the best mountain climbers and guides
in the world. Generally, they're short in stature, but noticeably
strong. They have a unique ethnic look, not obviously east-Asian or
Indian. The visibly genetic traits are uniquely their own. Friendly
sun-squinted eyes decorate a weathered face with rosy cheeks. Every
Sherpa has rosy cheeks.
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| Big Momma Sherpa... ran the guesthouse |
Day 6 (2nd mandatory
acclimatization and rest day):
The extreme elevation does something
to a person's bladder. On average I would have to wake up four times
every night to pee like a race horse. This was not fun. An hour or
so after finally falling asleep I'd get an uncomfortable urge. I'd
pull off the large wool blanket that was the only thing keeping in the
warm bubble my body heat created. At night, it felt just as cold inside as it
felt outside, minus the wind. It would take a minute for me to rub
my eyes and find my head lamp and turn it on. Then, I would trade
the wool booties for my hiking boots as to not soak them in the other
people's urine that covered the bathroom floor. There always seemed
to be a small puddle or stream surrounding the toilet where prior
pissers' flash lights or aim or both had failed them. It was like a
moat. A pee moat. It became like a game to me and I got pretty good
at it. Standing on one side of the moat and peeing into the toilet
on the other. I thought of it more like the 3-point line in
basketball. Having to go really bad at that elevation, there's
already a decent amount of pressure allowing you to shoot from a good
distance. Combine that with a slight backward lean and you get a
beautiful golden arch. If need be you can pinch a bit towards the
end to create the garden hose effect. This, along with a few
well-placed grunts are essential for sinking the last few drops.
After this, I would return to my room and form a new cocoon in my
blanket, only to sleep another hour and a half before having to wake
up and repeat the process.
The next day greeted me with my usual
morning headache and cough. I dressed and went into the common room
for some apple porridge. After eating I walked around the town to
see what it had to offer. I saw smoke coming from a small
establishment with beer signs in the window and a Sherpa man welcomed
me inside. He handed me a cold beer and led me to a backroom where a
man-on-man game of Russian Roulette was taking place. Old Sherpas
were cheering and smoking cigarettes and taking shots of Himalayan
moonshine as they placed their lowly bets on which contender would
pull the trigger for his last time. And then I... okay, okay... none
of this last paragraph really happened. The truth is, when I went
out to find what the town had to offer, I quickly discovered that the
answer was absolutely nothing. It was a ghost-town. I saw a few yaks, some rocks, and a tumbleweed. Sorry, no gambling Sherpas
with pistols.
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| view of Dingboche from a hill top... not much to it. |
Only 10 am and already bored, I
returned to the guesthouse and paid for a hot shower-- my second
shower since the trek began. The further along the EBC trek you go,
the higher the price is for a shower, especially a hot one. I paid
400 NRS (about $5 USD)-- later on I saw prices get as high as $20
USD! Many people go the entire trek without taking a single shower.
The shower that I used was in a small outside shack. It consisted of
an electric water-heater with a hose that was rigged to a pail with
several holes drilled in the bottom serving as the shower head. I
washed my body and washed my clothes. Steam filled the shack and
cleared my sinuses and for a minute I felt normal again. I would
have happily paid twice as much.
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| keeping warm |
The rest of the day was spent in the
common room. I rotated between reading, eating, sleeping. The
temporary sinus relief from the hot shower was short lived and my
head began producing surprising amounts of green and yellow mucus.
It was pretty impressive actually. I blew my nose every three
minutes and the pile of Kleenex on the table in front of me grew
larger as the hours went by. Other than my book, the only
entertainment was watching the two year-old Sherpa baby named Lokba.
He waddled around the common room and make faces at us while his
mother broke up “yak chips” for the furnace with her bare hands.
I hope she washed them before making my dinner but I doubt it.
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| Lokba Sherpa |
At night the common room filled with
other travelers. I watch through the window as a thick fog rolled in
and visibility outside was reduced to less than 10 feet. Sitting at
the table next to us, was a middle-aged Japanese trekker and his
guide. Mr. Roboto kept to himself and didn't speak to anyone, unlike
his guide who, like most Sherpas, was friendly and talkative. The
guide and my group made small talk and we asked some questions about
the upcoming days of the trek and what to expect. He told us that
our next destination, the town of Lobuche, only had a few guesthouses
and that they filled quickly so we should get an early start in the
morning to beat the large guided groups of trekkers. Waking up early
meant going to bed early so I took his advice and, already exhausted
from a day of doing nothing, I went to bed.
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