Day 4. Namche Bazar – Tengbuche, max elevation 3860m

We woke up again at 5.55 am. Above Namche everything would get more expensive so before breakfast Ville went to local supermarket to stock up, mostly toiletpaper. After eating we started walking towards Tengbuche. First part of the trail was easy, flat road following a mountain gorge. Down from us was a river valley and on the other side a lush forest. Along the way a we passed a couple of stupas that were also Everest lookouts. At the first stupa we saw Everest again. 

Our trail went down to the river valley and at the bottom was a checkpoint for the national park permit. We also stopped there for a tea and rest before a steep, steep climb to Tengbuche. On our way we met the Dutch couple we had met on our flight a couple days before. They didn’t have a porter with them and were carrying all their equipment by themselves so we passed them quite easily. 

After the hardest climb thusfar we reached our destination. Tengbuche is an old buddhist monastery village. The monastery has been rebuild two times (once in 1930s after the earth quake and second time after a fire). Every day on the morning and at 3 pm local monks have a prayer ceremony at the monastery. We went to see it, and so did everyone else. All the trekkers were sitting around the walls of the prayer room and a couple of monks were sitting in the middle chanting and drinking tee. The prayer room itself was really colourful and there was a giant golden statue of Buddha. It was so high you could barely see its head.

Day 5. Tengbuche, max. elevation 3860m

This day didn’t start well. Valeria had an upset stomach (after this no cheese for us and only bottled water). She ate her breakfast but after that felt even worse, so in the end we decided not to go to Dingbuche. Instead, Valeria slept the whole morning, after which she felt better. Then Ville had similar symptoms. He also slept them off. In the evening both were feeling better so hopes were high for the next day.

Day 6. Tengbuche – Dingbuche, max. elevation 4410m

In the morning Valeria was again feeling not so good, but we decided still to go to our next destination. At first, we were walking a little bit down to a river, but after that mildly up the whole way. On the way we saw small Sherpa villages and couldn’t help noticing that they had yak outdroppings drying everywhere. 

After a couple of hours Valeria started to feel worse. Luckily close was a village and she was revived with a good bottle of Fanta (which, by the way, costs here five times more than in the city, because there is no other way to bring it than on someone’s back). After that, we could continue all the way to Dingbuche.

Dingbuche resulted to be a little bigger village. The also had cafe/bakery, where they showed Everest themed movies. We thought that we had again our 3 o’clock entertainment, but apparently so did everyone else: there was absolutely no space. We went also shopping for some tiger balm since Valeria was also having some pains in the chest (apparently trying to breath to hard can make your muscles really sore), and bumped into three Americans from our plane. That was the only time we saw them, so we just hope they got to Everest Base Camp too.

We happened to be in the same lodge with the Dutch couple (with unpronouncable names, so sorry guys, can’t remember them!), so we had a nice evening playing cards and Topscore with them, their guide and an American called Mitch (While Raj was gambling with other guides).