I got 5.5 hours of sleep for the night. That doesn’t sound like much, but it was a welcome reprieve from the sleeplessness I had been experiencing. We needed to get an early start, so we dropped our larger, heavier overnight bags in the courtyard to get loaded on animals and grabbed some breakfast.

We started off on the trail with the summit team, they ended up heading off in front of us at the entrance to the national park. We passed through several small villages on the way with bakeries and shops, as well as folks just going about thier normal daily routines. In one village, these cute little girls (4ish) came up to me with their hands up and said “high five”; of course I had to oblige! I just wish I would have seen the parents so I could have gotten permission for a photo.

A little over 2 and 1/2 hours in, we stopped for lunch. The food has been much better than I expected; I guess I can thank tourism for that.

We continued on after lunch, arriving at the view of two span bridges, the higher of the two would be at later in the day. There are a lot of these two person wide cable span bridges on the route. Right before getting on the span bridge, I stopped for a picture with Flat Stanley and Penny Webster. Flat Stanley belongs to the niece of a work friend, she asked me to bring him along, and I was excited to be able to do so. Penny is one of the climbers on the summit team. It is great to meet the climbers; I’ll enjoy watching thier progress online as they work thier way up the mountain.

The final ascent to namche marked a noticable increase in difficulty. We climbed around 2000 feet in rocky terrain. This is easily the harshest terrain I have ever hiked in.

About midway up Namche hill, we stopped for a breather. Here we heard the story of a hiker in one of the groups resting there getting too close to a Yak; it swung it’s head at her and split her pack open with a horn. Note to self – give Yaks plenty of room.

I started slowing my pace intentionally after the stop. We still had our guide and one other behind me, so I saw no reason to push hard to stay with the main group. I was glad I did; I found myself in serenity with almost no people for a bit. The quiet of the mountain coupled with the sound of birds in the trees, it almost didn’t seem like I was so far from home (save the fact I knew I was on a mountain and in the clouds). This was the second time I’ve experienced this; the first was at our team dinner at a nice restaurant eating western food on a patio at Le Sherpa.

Not far from Namche, I decided that I was going to wait for the few folks behind me. After I sat, I realized that one of our Sherpas (Kami Tsering Sherpa) was there conversing with another sherpa. Kami talked me into going ahead instead of waiting and walked with me to Namche. Kami has worked really hard (as all our 3 sherpas have) to take care of us this trip. Oh, by the way, Kami has summited Everest twice.

We got to the lodge shortly thereafter and had some soup and tea; we’d meet for supper later. Again, the facilities were much better than I expected; nice restaurant, good rooms, and a hot shower. I think with the shops and nice lodging, you could consider Namche almost a resort town.

Looking back, today was a tough day, but not miserable. I picked up a couple toe blisters I need to watch, but all in all I’m taking this pretty well. If it was easy, more people would take this on.  My O2 level is normally 97 or 98% at home. In Phakding, I was at 92-93%. Arriving at Namche, it was 88-89%. After a night of sleep, back up to 92-93%. I wonder if it will improve more after another night at Namche; tomorrow is a rest day; we’ll do a small hike and have the rest of the day in Namche to ourselves.