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Jiri to Goyko... On a Shoestring and Half a Lung
Even with our late start, we made it to the village of Mali and enjoyed our first night on the trail at the Solu Khumbu lodge, which is owned by a kind couple and their three children. Nepal trekking is more about getting out and meeting the real Nepali people than trekking in any true wilderness. The next day, just as we had dreaded, was dismal, rain and a perpetual fog hugged the surrounding mountains. Steve raised all our spirits with his crazed banter and running up the hills like a complete nutcase. Struggling over the Pass at Deorali as the water poured down, we got our morale up on some fine milk tea and Snickers bars at a teahouse, before we began the mudslide into Bhandar for the night. We stayed at the Buddha Lodge teahouse and I hoped it would bring us luck as our room looked like a refugee camp from Hurricane Andrew. Wet packs, boots, clothes, and bodies all in a room not more 10 by 10. The next day we "Hi Ho-ed" our way off down the trail with a little sun in our faces. Giordie was lagging a little this morning and no wonder, as his pack was a monstrosity. I found out later that he was carrying a real cast iron pot and 10 packets of Chinese noodles! Steve and I looked at him like your average insane asylum escapee. We ate lunch at the beautiful little town of Kenja where we watched untold numbers of porters inch by with their hideously heavy loads. Let's see...I'll have the "Dhal Bhat" – a Nepali staple and something very few hikers on the tourist circuit try. It's the best thing I know for unbelievable energy, plus they keep bringing out second and third helpings 'til you burst! I think I overdid it as I waddled out of Kenja trying in vain to keep going up the steep trail, as is much of the trail in the Everest region since you have to trek over many river valleys.
Waking the next day we got a real spring in our step on our way up a ridge, as this was the first day on the trail during which, hopefully, we were going to get a glimpse of Everest. Trekking up to a small teahouse, aptly called the "Everest View," what did we see? Clouds, Everest-hugging, never moving, clouds! Grumbling on down the trail to Rigmo for a nice plate of Dhal and some killer apple pie we cheered our dour moods and trekked over the next ridge. On the way down we paid our respects at the Trakshindo Buddhist monastery where they treated us to Tasmpa along with our enlightenment. Crashing down the trail towards Nuntala we got our first glimpse of tall, white glaciated peaks ahead for the first time. I got a "nice" cold shower at the Shangri La guesthouse, but the really "nice" Yak mo-mos warmed me up as we fed hungrily during dinner. "Nice" is a descriptive word you either learn to love or go crazy hearing around citizens of the UK. They used it as their descriptive word for everything! As I argued "How can anything taste NICE? What flavor is that?" James and Steve just shook their heads despairingly, but I think I was wining Giordie on to my side of reason.
Lakpa was a very modest man having achieved so much in his life, someone I think many Westerners could learn from. This was also the first night on the trail that we imbibed in a few beers, and Steve, being Irish, showed his true heritage. He drank six pints of beer to my four, but he got sick after running his head into the low overhanging doorway to his room that night! I laughed 'til I wept after witnessing that! Surprisingly, the next day the Aussies, who drank nine pints apiece, got going at 6 a.m.! The trail was supposed to be magnificent today, clambering along a cliffside with a treacherous 3,000-foot drop into a deep gorge on one side all along the way to Lukla. This would have been great to see if, once again, we weren't getting the torrential rains pouring down on us. The last hill up to Lukla was a gut-buster, with my heavy boots like full buckets of rainwater, just making it in before nightfall.
After a brief stop for lunch at the "nice" village of Phukding, where we yelled out with our sick sense of humor to every passerby "Are you Phukding with me?" We stopped at the Sagarmatha national park office to check in. The weather was its usual dreary self and we hiked over some gorgeous bridges and then did the Khumbu Stairmaster 2000 hill all the way up to Namche Bazaar. In the village we found a great teahouse to stay at. It had a bar right on the premises to whet our thirst and the next day we sat around acclimatizing, eating, and drinking at well over 10,000 feet in elevation. I was hoping my cold, which had started in Jiri, but was now giving me constant hacking fits at night, would get better during my the day off. We left early the next day, climbing straight up the hillside hanging over Namche. By the time we reached the large village of Khunjung it was pouring down rain once more. A long descent started towards a bridge over the Dudh Kosi then began a slow ponderous slog, nowhere-but-up switchbacks for over an hour. At least we weren't as bad as the herd of tourists we passed, who were fresh off the plane at Lukla. They were hacking and wheezing all the way up their first major climb in the Khumbu. We passed them by the dozens and then got up on top of the ridge and viewed the beautiful Tengpoche monastery. We found a tiny guesthouse behind the monastery with a few small rooms free, and all the other rooms were packed with a large French trekking group. Finally, the next morning, we woke to a beautiful sunrise and our first views of Everest, which was just peeking over Nuptse and Lhoste. Ama Dablam was the beautiful mountain beacon begging us to come closer! We stood on the ridge for over an hour watching the sunrise with our maps in hand, trying feverishly to figure out which mountain was which. We trudged on with renewed vigor during the day, as the sun splashed over all the peaks before us, but found it hard weaving around big tour groups as we made it to Pheriche. The terrain up here was so different; no big trees, just high alpine scrub and rocks. Our final acclimatization day started the next morning and I used it to get at the sickness in my lungs. I slept a lot and went down to the Himalayan Rescue Association's office to get some antibiotics. Sleeping in teahouses up in the high Khumbu isn't easy because Yak dung is burned for heat and you can't escape the constant smell of it.
There I lay for three days, taking antibiotics, sleeping, and drinking gallons of fluids. What emerged was a new man! On my fourth day after leaving my mates at Duglha I set out towards Goyko with power in my legs. I stopped for a lunch of Dhal and some great photos of Ama Dablam, and then headed towards Dole where I spent the night. The trail was clogged with Yak trains and trekkers as I hiked from Dole towards Goyko. After passing Machhermo and trekking through a wide, windswept valley near Pangka, I crossed a small bridge at the top of the valley over a small rushing river coming from the first of five major lakes in the Goyko region. A Yak train coming by gave me good reason to vacate the trail because you have a huge drop-off towards an abyss on one side of the trail and Yak horns on the other! I rumbled into Goyko still early in the afternoon and got a bed in the cramped Gokyo resort bunkroom. The setting of Goyko is surreal, with this beautiful, jade green alpine lake in front of it and a staggering vista of peaks above. Just behind Goyko village is the largest glacier in Nepal, called Ngozumpa, that snakes south from the foothills of Cho Oyu. I slept that night perched precariously on the edge of an upper bunk with a loud snoring Dutchman right in my ear! For the next four days this small village would be my primary base camp for day hikes all over the region. Goyko Ri, a small peak in front of the village, offered a majestic panorama of Everest and beyond and I clambered up for a view of a snowstorm coming in over Goyko.
We saw only a few people that day and the views were mind-numbingly gorgeous and I think the Khumbu was putting on one final show before I was to leave the next day. We reached the base of a large boulder field heading up the Fang and I began to feel the altitude as we jumped from rock to odd-shaped rock. There is nothing like rock hopping at the extreme altitude of 18,000 feet to bring out the nihilist in you! Of the three "Fangs" that you can climb, the first is the only non-technical one, and we drug ourselves up it as we got giddy in the thin air. Everest cleared her beautiful black pyramid and we felt our hearts skip a beat as we stared at the entire North Face falling down into Tibet. My entire trek to this point was so full of trial and tribulation, but just this one view at this one moment in time sealed it as a moment to treasure forever. All the hiking back out of the Khumbu would be with a smile. My UN trekking crew didn't catch up with me 'til Namche as they had problems over the Cho La pass, but we had a million stories to tell all the way to back Kathmandu. One thing we unanimously agreed on was that the whole experience had been much more than "Nice."
—Paul Nickodem, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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