EBC Day 11 Dzhonghla – Lobuche

In my opinion the tea house yesterday was the worst so far. No WiFi, mice in the corridors, no indoor washroom and they refused to charge my power pack. Jacek and I spent most of the afternoon in a nearby lodge using their WiFi and drinking coffee. I also succumbed to the temptation and bought a tube of Pringles! We returned to our own lodge to update our altitude checks and go to bed. I was tired and had a good long sleep getting at 7.30 and casual preparation for the half day hike to Lobuche.

The walk began with gentle descent to a river crossing at which point we noticed a number of very large birds circling around. Santosh advised they were vultures, 7 in total however it was impossible to get close enough for a decent picture.

We then started to gain elevation following the path up and around a couple of relatively small hills as we approached the main Khumbu valley where we would eventually link up again with the much busier traditional Base Camp Trek route at the foot of the Khumbu Glacier. We stopped at one point and watched a small avalanche cascade down one of the slopes on Cholatse. Once again the scenery is almost beyond words to describe and as we turned north into the Khumbu valley itself a completely new panorama revealed itself. From our track high on the hillside we could see trekkers, porters, mules and yaks on the busy trail below which ran parallel to ours. Our paths crossed again with an Argentine girl and her dog who we had encountered in Namche last week and stopped to chat for a while, briefly comparing experiences. After that we dropped down off the hill, over a small snow covered glacier and merged into the traffic heading north. A short time we had climbed gradually back up to about 5000m and arrived in Lobuche where we stay tonight. In total contrast to yesterday WiFi is decent and my room has an en-suite of sorts, basically a WC and a basin, neither of which is plumbed in.

A relaxing afternoon catching up on a few things, spoke to some Colombians in Spanish briefly, not forgetting to apologise for beating them in the World Cup last year!!

Will be in bed quite early as we have a long day tomorrow, making it all the way to Everest Base Camp – we may even be there when people are actually reaching the summit of the mountain itself.