Target of the day, Lobuche, at an altitude of 4900M, via Thukla. Business as usual for the Fab 5, leading the way and heading towards Thukla, our lunch place. After walking for a couple of hours, we reached a place where we could see our lunch place on the hilltop on the other side of the river.
We just took a halt as the stream looked very pleasant and also we could see some ice formed over the rocks. Sudhir did some heroics here and managed to get on top few rocks placed absolutely in the middle of the stream, his heroics were applauded by all of us and Kanchuki captured few nice pics of him. Kanchuki and I also followed him. We could literally see the ice being formed on the rocks and we were trying to break it. We settled down on the rocks for quite some time and we saw the remaining group also joined us. Did not know who started the fight, we started fighting with ice and stones. Kanchuki and I have started throwing ice at them (Ali bhai and Ramesh), they, in return, started throwing stones into the water such that sprinkled water would drench us. Finally, we won the battle and Sachin was busy in some serious camera work. We played like this for 10-15 mins, it was loads of fun. I enjoyed it myself, hope the others also did. Headed to lunch place on the hilltop, we took the shortcut and the others have encouraged the regular route.
Sat down at the lunch table and had some great "Hot Lemon". We bumped into the guy from Portugal, Joao, who flew in the same flight as ours to Lukla and apparently his luggage got misplaced. He shared all his stories to Kanchuki, looked like she was the only one interested in. We ordered "Vegetarian Noodles" for all of us, one plate each, of course. Food was not that great, but decent. Had a 15 min break before we head to Lobuche. There was a steep climb in front of us, Fab 5 have started their business with Om Bahadur Ji in the lead. There was no clear path, rocks placed all over, had to really make our way, mostly in serpentine fashion. Lobuche was at least an hour and a half away, we witnessed one memorial, in the name of a sherpa, "Babu Chri Sherpa", who summitted everest record eleven times, and held few world records to have summitted in the shortest time, and spent most number of hours at the summit, and so on. Fab 5 reached Lobuche @ around 3 in the afternoon, and reached our hotel "Above the Clouds".
Called home and informed that I was doing good, I also felt good as I called them after four days. Each call cost us 100NPR. Rest of the team joined us around 4 in the evening. It was chilling weather outside, this was one of the worst possible accommodations I could think of, very small rooms, and there was no proper restroom. Kanchuki, Sudhir and I wanted to go out for an evening walk @ 5. We ventured out and severely beaten by the cold wind, everyone of us felt bad, so we had to abandon our fantasies and walk back to the hotel room.
Day 8 comes to an end here.
Ohh the hot lemon at Dhugla ... just so appropriate for the cold weather there :)
ReplyDeleteYou just found one memorial at the top? There has to be a bunch of them, of all those real heroes of those mountains!! I don't remember, if Rob Hall and Scott Fisher also has memorial here!!
I hate Lobuche. I found it eery and sick. I think one should rather push and reach Gorak Shep instead of cutting a day there!
Hot Lemon and Hot Chocolate were the hottest items on the menu everyone ordered either Hot Lemon or Hot chocolate.
ReplyDeleteSame feeling, I liked the stay at Gorak Shep than Lobuche and the Lodge was also better at Gorak Shep. Actually Gorak Shep it seems is relatively less windy because it is completely surrounded by mountains may be that is one of the reasons..