Black Rock, What a Beauty. (Not the Coffee Shop)
Ashwyn k -
Welcome back, readers, to one of my last posts for my Senior Project! It’s been a crazy journey, and trying to catch up with everything after being gone for a couple of weeks has been tough, but it will be done!! Today, I’ll be sharing the final leg of my journey with you—from Namche to Tengboche, Dingboche, Lobuche, and Gorakshep, all the way to Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar, and finally heading back down to Kathmandu.
Like most other days, we woke up at 7:00 in Namche, ate breakfast at 7:30, and were out by 8:00. Our goal for the day was Tengboche, where the famous Tengboche monastery resides. We had estimated to get there by around 2 PM, like most other trekking days, which did happen. The first half of this trek was pretty tame; it was nothing terribly steep, just normal up-and-down and up-and-down hiking. I did see quite a few animals, though! One of which was the Himalayan Monal, which I think was one of the highlights of this entire trek. The Himalayan Monal is the national bird of Nepal, and I have only ever seen it in a book I own called Birds of Nepal, so I was absolutely stoked when our guide said he spotted the bird on the side of the mountain. I tunnel visioned, looking straight and down, that I completely missed the bird and even walked passed it, but as soon as Mahendra pointed out the bird, I ran back immediately. I did snap a photo and a video of the bird, but it was a little far away, so it wasn’t the best quality photo. Before this, as we were leaving Namche, I did see a small cat that walked up to me and was nuzzling up to my leg. Such a cutie.
For the remaining parts of the trekking day, we had to trek down for quite a while, losing around 200-300 meters of elevation, just to stop for lunch and trek back up the side of another mountain to get to Tengboche (3867m). The hike up the side of the mountain was gruesome… It was the first time that I decided to use my trekking poles, and I’m grateful for making that decision. I had intended on pushing through it without the poles, since I was thinking it could be a good way to condition myself for harsher conditions, but after thinking it through, I realized it’s probably best to take it slow with the poles. As we were on the road up, I saw so many yaks, and I was just thinking about how their whole lives consist of walking from one village to another, over and over, and over again. They carry goods from one location to the next, and will come from Lukla (2860m) or Namche (3440m) and go all the way up to Gorakshep (5100m).
When we finally reached Tengboche, I was so tired that I immediately laid down on the bed, even though I was dirty. What I didn’t know was that Tengboche would be the final location where I could even take a warm shower until returning to Namche on the way back down. We went to the monastery where the monks were doing a puja for the day. The interior design was spectacular, with loads of Buddhist and Hindu imagery, paintings all over the walls filled with scenes of the Buddha and countless animals, and humans. In the back, there was a large statue of the Buddha made completely out of gold (I believe), and many other paintings on the walls. When entering a monastery or any sort of temple, it is required that you remove your shoes to show respect for the religion. We sat there and observed the puja for a bit, then after 30 or so minutes, we headed back to our inn. I took a long shower, then went straight to sleep after eating our dinner.
The following day was our trek to Dingboche! We followed our normal wake-up, breakfast, and leave schedule and were on our way to our next destination. This trek wasn’t that bad either, because the first 4-5 hours were pretty steady in elevation gain as we went up and down and up and down again. By this point, the views were starting to get better and better. Before Tengboche, there were only certain places that we could see the snow-capped mountains, one of which was the Everest View Point in Namche (we couldn’t see Everest since it was so foggy). One of the major mountains that seemed to follow us as we went to Dingboche and Lobuche was Ama Dablam. If you follow my Instagram, you’ve likely seen my reel post of Ama Dablam from Dingboche (4410m), it’s a gorgeous mountain. The name “Ama Dablam” actually refers to the fact that there are two peaks to the mountain, a larger one and a much smaller one. “Ama” in Nepali means mother, which refers to the larger peak, and “Dablam” refers to the fact that there are two or “double” peaks.
Something that made the trek more enjoyable was actually the amount of fog that was settling around the mountains and in the valley. Now, normally a lot of fog is bad during EBC treks, because it inhibits the ability of the tourists to even view the peaks that they paid money to see, but in my opinion I think it added to the beauty of the mountains. Obviously, it’s a little sad not to be able to see clearly into the distance, but I personally enjoyed the gloomy environment and in a way kinda wished it stayed like that. As we made our way, it stayed gloomy for the rest of the day, and by the time we reached Dingboche at around 2-3 PM, it became very chilly and windy.
Dingboche was the start of a new era for me. Prior to Dingboche, I kept trying different items on the menus that they gave us, sometimes spaghetti, sometimes dal bhat (the og Nepali dish), maybe even pizza or chow mein if I felt like it. For dinner in Dingboche, though, I started eating the instant ramen noodles they served, Shin Ramen. I’m a huge fan of instant ramen, and I became an even bigger fan while living in the mountains for 12 days, because as you go farther and farther into your trek to EBC, the food usually gets less flavorful and less fresh. All the goods that are sold in the later villages are transported either by ox or porters, so it will take a few days to get them to the later settlements. For this reason, powdered goods are more popular than the fresh alternatives, powdered milk over fresh milk, powdered soup flavoring over real soup, and many others. In comparison to the powdered, less fresh foods, stuff like instant ramen tastes much better than other foods. So if you think about it, my eating ramen almost every day until we got back to Lukla wasn’t a terrible idea!.. Let’s ignore that it probably isn’t healthy.
The following day was another acclimatization day, this time in Dingboche, we climbed a nearby mountain named Nangkartshang at around 4800 meters, 400 meters above Dingboche. It was at this point that I realized I was struggling a little bit. I didn’t do any acclimatization training, so this was the first time I had ever been near that altitude in my life. The solution that both the company and guides recommended was taking Diamox both after breakfast and after dinner, which helped surprisingly well! I only really struggled with managing my energy as we got higher in altitude, which is pretty good. Lots of people have to get flown out because their bodies can’t handle the altitude and end up breaking out. Luckily, that didn’t happen to us. The hike took us around 3 hours, and then after meeting a small fuzzy caterpillar, we headed back down to our inn. On the way back down, we walked through the small village, and that’s when our guide told us that Dingboche is actually the highest and farthest Sherpa village in the Himalayas! Most of the inns and teahouses there are run by Sherpas, and during the winter and summer seasons, a majority of them will close so that they can do whatever they want. The winter and summer seasons are much less crowded and popular than the fall and spring seasons, so it works out for them. We finally got to the inn, I took a nap, ate more ramen noodles for dinner, and then went to sleep.
We, once again, woke up at 7, ate breakfast at 7:30, then left by 8 to go to Lobuche (4940m)! The first hour or two was a flat landscape with not too much going on. We were able to view the path we’d end up taking when returning, since it was in the valley below us. We reached our lunch location, but since it only took us around 2 hours to get there, we decided to skip lunch and head straight to Lobuche. Right after our lunch spot, we were greeted with our path for the next 2 hours, a long uphill section full of rocks. I was not excited at all. The amount of breaks I took was unholy, but after breaking my back and puffing out lots of air, we made it to the top and stayed to look at a memorial. Afterwards, we kept on pushing and made it to Lobuche, where we ate our lunch and immediately took a nap afterwards. From this point onwards, we saw new mountains. Up until now, it had been Ama Dablam and Taboche, but now we could see mountains like Nuptse and Lola. I once again ate ramen for dinner, then went to sleep early to wake up even earlier for the day of the base camp!
We woke up at 4:00 this time and were out the door by 5:00 to get to Gorakshep (5164m), where we would end up making our way to EBC (5364m). By this point, all of our surroundings consisted of rocks, and more rocks, and even more rocks… We could finally see the glaciers that I had been hoping to see the entire time we had been climbing. What I didn’t know was that in the areas leading up to and surrounding Gorakshep, all the glaciers are under the ground. The places where Gorakshep and EBC are located are actually built on top of rocks, which are located on top of the glaciers. The glaciers happen to be sturdy enough to support tons and tons of rocks and human settlements. Halfway through our trek to Gorakshep, it started to snow heavily, leading to problems with stable footing and visibility, not to mention it was unbearably cold. By the time we were in Lobuche, we were wearing around 3-4 layers on both top and bottom. We also felt very nasty, since we hadn’t showered in a couple of days, but we made it to Gorakshep at around 8 AM, and we took an hour just to recoup ourselves and prepare for the last (kinda) destination of our journey.
After our break, we headed out to EBC, and it wasn’t actually that bad. Since it was only a 200m elevation gain from Gorakshep, it didn’t feel too bad going there. At this point, we could see all the major mountains near Everest in the area: Lhotse, Nuptse, Lola, Pumori, and a few others. On the way to EBC, we saw many porters carrying items for the soon-to-be summiters of Everest, which raised my respect for them even more, as I was dying to catch my breath. After many grueling hours and many more breaks, we made it!
It felt surreal, and honestly, my goal was Kala Patthar, not Base Camp, but the fact that we made it to the place we had been working towards for over 10 days was a great feeling. After filming my thanks for my vlog, which I still need to edit, we headed back to Gorakshep, and as soon as we did, we saw the large line of people that came to go to EBC as well. We luckily made it before the traffic began, and were able to safely make it back to our inn, where I once again ate ramen for dinner. The next day would be our final day at high altitude, and the beginning of our descent back to Lukla.
The following day, we woke up early in the morning (around 4 AM) to go to our final destination, Kala Patthar (5555m). Kala Patthar directly translates to “black rock” in Nepali, hence my blog title, and refers to the coloration of the rock on the peak of the mountain. I felt terrible waking up that early, and the fact that it was snowing so early in the morning as well contributed to my general tiredness while hiking, and unhappy emotions. That was at least until I met a friend. Another guide had left his tourist with us since he had wanted to go back to sleep, kinda odd seeing as that is his job, but alas, I and this new stranger were making our way to the top of Kala Patthar with our guide and my dad a little bit behind us. As we walked for a bit, I realized the guy’s first language wasn’t English, and I heard an accent whenever he was talking. That’s when I straight up asked him, “Where are you from?” He replied that he was from Spain, and my eyes instantly lit up. From that moment onwards, I talked to this Spanish guy in Spanish, and he was actually impressed! He told me that he lives in a city between Barcelona and Madrid, and after asking if he likes hiking in Spain, he told me that he is saddened that people go to Spain for the beaches and other large tourist attractions when the mountains are much more beautiful! I promised him that one day I would go to Spain and climb the mountains just for him. After we chatted for a bit, we finally made it to the top. It felt even more unreal in comparison to EBC. We made it up to nearly 5600 meters above sea level, all of our surroundings were covered in ice and snow, walking around felt nearly impossible because of the risk that would come with accidentally making a wrong step and slipping down the entire mountain, it was foggy everywhere, and it was obviously unbearably cold. I stayed there for a little bit just to enjoy all of my hard work, then we started to head back down to Gorakshep.
We finally made it back to Gorakshep, and then after packing up all of our bags, we ate our breakfast and were on our way back down to Lukla. The rest of our trekking days were spent quickly making our way back down and resting at Pangboche one night, Namche the next, and finally, Lukla. Afterwards, we said our goodbyes to our guide and porter, took a few photos together, and then we were on our way back to Kathmandu. And that’s it! There’s nothing else left to say about my EBC trek, well, there is some, but that’s for another day.
If you want to come to see my Senior Project presentation, then make sure to come to BASIS Mesa on May 17. Until next time. See you later, friends!
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