Day 10 Dingboche, Wednesday May 8, 2013


Dingboche 4410m up to 4750m and back

A sleep in morning – hooray. Both Spencer and I are feeling under the weather this morning. We hang in there and hydrate and I feel better after a meal of french toast. Bikesh says we will leave for our acclimatization hike at 10am so we have plenty of time.

I decide to wash a few clothes and to my dismay they smell of wood smoke instead of fresh mountain air – oh well at least they are clean.

We depart early at 9:30am and very tentatively and ever so slowly hike our way up to 4750m. Here Bikesh rewards us with a chocolate bar – his version of ‘energy bars’. Charles says he is like a drug pusher getting us hooked on chocolate!

We relax on the boulders, take a few photos and soak up the sun. As long as we are out of the wind it is a glorious day. Spencer and I feel much better now and are happy that Bikesh forced us up the hill.

Our descent is quick and we make a b-line for lunch. The fave is ordered, Ra-Ra noodles with veg, and we are happy campers. The afternoon is spent reading, napping, solving Suduko and Internet.

At 5PM, like a dutiful assistant, I took the dinner order and shortly after Bikesh appeared, suitably impressed. We were no sooner finished our last bite when Bikesh pipes up that we need to order for tomorrow’s breakfast – groans from all of us!

Just before dinner a couple that was in the dining room rushed out as apparently a helicopter was on its way for them. They have been waiting since 6am this morning as she is quite ill. We didn’t hear anything and before long they are back – too many clouds for the helicopter to come in. They also told us that the brother of one of the villagers here in Dingboche fell at Camp 3 and died. That’s 2 that we have heard of in as many days.

As I was reading in the dining room this afternoon, I overhead a conversation of a group from the US. It sounded like they did the same acclimatization hike as we did and were struggling. One of the fellows is not well and his son is very ill and has had the Dr. visit – yikes. To me it sounds like he needs to go down but they are thinking that if he feels better in the morning they will get him to Lobuche at 4900m – absolute madness. I hope their guide doesn’t allow it!! Later Charles and I were talking and we both had wanted to say something but thought it best to keep quiet.

We stay in the dining room and chat following dinner waiting for a reasonable hour to go to bed, not 6:30.
To entertain ourselves we have Ishower doing Suduko, Bikesh counting stars, Spencer teasing him just to watch his expressions, and Tshiri playing with a deck of 50 cards with several duplicates. I asked Ishower how to say Uncle in Nepali as Bikesh is his Uncle. He said it is Kaka and both Spencer and I giggled and said ‘do you know what that means in English?’ When we told them they all burst out laughing. And on that note we decided it was time for bed – early or not!

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