April 13, 2007

"You climb for the hell of it." — Edmund Hillary

Today is Friday the 13th a most auspicious day to start my trek. I started my day with wakeup tea (the cooks bring tea to your tent to wake you up) which is a great way to start the day and quite a novel experience. I then went out to purchase a rainfly and hopefully divest myself of one of my many 1000 NR notes which are unlikely to be accepted at rural tea houses, and I was successful on both accounts. I also met members of a french party also destined for Mera, so with any luck I will be able to enjoy their company for the first leg of my journey. It figures I travel half way around the world and I still end up speaking french :P We finally left Lukla ~ 9 and arrived at Chuttanga, our destination, ~ 2. The hike up was quite pleasant, I finally saw my first yaks (their identity confirmed by Kazi), plenty of bamboo, rhododendrons in bloom, and passed through several samll settlements. While it was all quite beautiful I can't imagine what it must have been like 10-20 years ago as there has been substantial deforestation. Chuttanga is at 3245m and I think I may be experiencing slight effects of altitude, I was wheezing a bit earlier and from time to time have a slight headache. There is only ~66% of O2 here that there is at sea level. Tomorrow we climb to 4600m where O2 is only about 57%, hopefully I won't put up too pathetic a display.
Kazi ate part of his supper with me tonight which was quite nice as sherpas and porters tend to eat separate from their clients. He was a bit quite when we first met (but so was I I guess) and now we are talking more and getting along famously, I like him quite a bit, I definently lucked out here. I guess the only other comment I have tonight is the amount of food the cooks try to feed me, it is all very tasty but I can only eat so much, I think they suffer from the 'Nanny syndrome' (my grandmother always prepares 3 times as much food as necessary and then tries to force it upon you, oh we refer to her as our Nanny (dont ask me why I have no clue)). Oh, and the french team has a toilet tent! Obsurd! Definently not ultralite : )