base camp to Namche to Lukla to Kathmandu

 Walked from base camp to Namche trying to see the landscape with new eyes.  I saw some children flying paper airplanes off the trail and glimmers of light on the distant Tenbouche monastery.  I saw monks and porters carrying their own kinds of burdens  and saw many people from all over the world, pilgrims, maybe, walking the long road. I saw young boys carrying immense loads of plywood. I stopped at the river lunch place and went inside where the guides eat, where the monks go, and talked with a mother carrying a child in her arms and to her mother, the grandmother who sold me a bracelet. I wanted to work in the kitchen for awhile.

 I had not had a shower in 8 days, so I went to the barber in Namche to get my hair washed and cut. I could not face an actual shower on the cold concrete floor of the tiny bathroom in the Llasa Guest House. The young barber really liked his own hair and was not shy about showing it off.

 The best part of our wild race from Namche to Lukla, a 9 hour walk that we did in 5, racing past hundreds of trekkers, lines of cattle, donkeys...was stopping to see my friend Jetta at the bakery in Phakding and eating Yak cheese and freshly baked  bread, a bit of a tradition for me.  Tanner thought Yak cheese was pretty good, in spite of stories to the contrary.

In Lukla you never know if you are going to take off in two hours or two days.  Below, right, is the church in Kathmandu, which we visited after landing, amazingly getting to Kathmandu in time.  They sang "high on a mountain top"

 When I arrived in Lukla, I was tired of walking, so I sat in a chair on the side of the road and  watched as a girl, maybe 11 and her younger sister, maybe 8, were carrying big baskets of soda up the little road. They were bantering with each other as if it were a game.  But when I saw them still carrying the supplies from the airplane up over the hill into town, I thought, they should be home playing and maybe reading a book.

Amazingly, Kathmandu has posted no honking signs!  The streets are unusually quiet, quiet for Kathmandu, that is.  And there is electricity all day and all night! There are still prayer flags in Thamel from the Diwali festival, and we ate at my favorite green mountain organic restaurant.