Day 11: Monjo to Lukla.
I awoke to texts from our kids reporting that they had arrived in Kathmandu and checked into the Ramada with no difficulty. This was good! We were starting to get anxious about returning to the city on time and plunging directly into wedding activities.
Our lips were still beyond chapped. They stayed dry, cracked, and bleeding for several days after we got back to Kathmandu.
Bala had us start out early this morning and kept up a brisk pace. He wanted to get into Lukla early so that he could visit the station master at the airport and move us to an earlier morning flight to Kathmandu the next day.
The trail was crowded for the first time this trip. Hordes of tour groups were heading uphill toward base camp, perhaps because the weather finally looked promising. Some of the Indian groups looked like they had 40 or 50 participants. This was the sort of crowding I’d half expected and had been pleasantly surprised to avoid. September and October are the real high season, though; the clear weather would be an attraction, but it would be hard to have to deal with constant crowding on the trails.
Bala wanted us to eat a quick, light lunch, and Chris and I were down with that, but evidently the Mountain Lodges don’t do quick and light. We sat at the table for over an hour, first enjoying herbal tea and cookies and then having a spicy potato appetizer, fried chicken sandwiches, and dessert. So much for out anticipated weight loss on the trail!
Bala set a brisk pace for the last section of the trail. No more lingering or stopping to take a million pictures for us! We arrived at the Lukla Mountain Lodge in mid-afternoon, with plenty of time for Bala to complete his errand.
It was STILL hard to climb all those steps up to the Lukla Mountain Lodge!
The hotel manager promised us plenty of hot water for our showers. This was a false promise. The water wasn’t even trying to be hot. The bathrooms also had that odd set-up where the shower isn’t contained at all, which meant that the bathroom floors were entirely soaked.
Ah well! We knew not to expect perfect luxury on this trek. At least we were clean.
We took a brief walk through town, mainly to visit the Lukla Gear shop (didn’t see anything we wanted) and the airport.
Bala insists that the Lukla airport’s reputation as “the most dangerous airport in the world” is completely undeserved, and that it has a very good record of flights safely taking off and landing.
Tonight was the only night we ate out at a town restaurant instead of in the Mountain Lodge’s own dining room. Before dinner, we met Bala and Mila in the lobby for the grand gear giveaway. I gave the two of them nearly all my clothes and gear. Bala had already claimed my Ghost Whisperer for his wife and my Leki cane for his mother, and was happy to take my North Fake duffel from Thamel for his own gear. Mila accepted everything I offered, including dirty leggings and Uniqlo Heattech shirts with rips in the collars. He was especially delighted to receive my rain pants, which he’d carried to Pangboche and back and I’d never worn. Chris handed over most of his batteries to Bala.
Tip: Don’t buy those “solar powered powerbanks” you see on Amazon. There is no universe in which they will charge fast enough to be useful. You can walk to electricity much faster than they can charge, even under the brightest sun. Unless you are going to the South Pole or something, they just add weight and expense.
This giveaway is customary, and it is one of the reasons why you see rural Nepalis who might make $1300 a year going around in North Face and Patagonia. I realized that part of our journey to the mountains was as importers; shipping to the Khumbu faces all the same difficulties that just plain traveling does, so visitors leaving gear and clothing behind kills two birds with one stone.
Before we left the U.S., I’d asked Hunter at Wilderness Travel how much we should give in gratuities. She replied “Tipping is ultimately up to your discretion, but you can use a suggestion of around $10/trekking day for the porter and $15/day for the main guide. Either USD or rupees are fine to use for tipping. You’ll have the same guide and porter throughout, so you can tip at the last dinner at the end of the trek.”
We followed these guidelines and had actually brought that cash in envelopes with us from the U.S. Chris had been adding to the amounts as we traveled–once we saw how much work it is to trek and carry in Nepal, we really appreciated the effort the guys were making!
We walked through town and behind the end of the runway to a restaurant, where we struggled to make conversation with Mila. He speaks no English and maybe not even much Nepali (he’s a Rai, a Christian ethnic group), so Bala had to interpret absolutely everything. But it was interesting. Mila is in his late 50s. He lives two days walk downhill from Lukla. His oldest son is 30, and his youngest child (of four?) is in his early teens. The oldest son still hasn’t finished high school, and allegedly claims that he won’t marry until he hits this milestone. It can take the mountain kids years to finish grades because they are needed to work the farms and tend the livestock. Also, the schools can be long walks from their homes.
Chris handed over our tips at the end of dinner. He did this somewhat formally–in Nepal, it’s polite to hand gifts to people with both hands, and they receive them the same way.
This was another early night for us. All we wanted that trip was to go to bed early and sleep as long as we could.