Phakding to Paiya – Going up to go Down

A typical Himalayan trek day starts between 5am and 8 am. It ends between 4pm and 6.30pm. It goes up and up but rarely down. It hurts and at high altitude you feel unwell and breathless. Your heart beats fast with every laboured step and you can’t walk more then a few metres without resting. If you’re unlucky you’re one of the 5 per day who needs an emergency helicopter evacuation in the Everest area. Of 30,000 people who complete the Everest Base Camp trek every year up to 15 die.

But now we’re coming down. We’re all ok and things are hunky dory. Aren’t they?

We set off towards Lukla and watched out for the turnoff down towards the river that would take us to Jiri (our endgame after Pikey Peak).

We found it, followed it and we’re glad that we did because Lukla airport was shut, and had been for a few days because the weather wasn’t good there. That meant that a horde of people due to fly in with Lukla tickets would be taking short flights or buses from Kathmandu and walking up the very valley that we are walking down, And competing for normally unused, and certainly scarce, accommodation.

We dropped down further and the clouds, jungle and ancient Buddhist carvings and steps weaved a spell. The weather was worsening but the place has charm, and that held up.

So does Killer. Those gaiters, shades and camo-shorts spell C-L-A-S-S.

The views as we dropped down were amazing.

And then we noticed that the route down the valley had started to climb. Nir had advised of a climb, but this went on and on.

And the drops on the right hand side of the path rose from 500 feet to over a thousand. Don’t trip.

In fact we were climbing back up into the ‘mostly gasping when climbing uphill zone’ and we were in complete cloud.

The climb continued and we came across more people walking up from Salleri/Jiri to Everest, and we began to wonder about accommodation for the night.

When something is up, Nir lags behind and phones folk. He may be behind, out of sight for ages, but then turns up like a rejuvenated Gollum. On this occasion the lag got longer. And so did the climb, up to two hours and no white smoke from Gollum. Whilst the weather got worse.

Then a breakthrough. Nir came scampering up, smiling and relaxed. He had bagged the last room in Paiya and he was, rightfully, pleased with himself. Thank Christ for that; I didn’t fancy sleeping outside in the rain.

We were climbing forever, clocking up a total of 4 hours ascending, and we were knackered. The climb was steep and it suddenly evened out, with a small village appearing out of the cloud. We found our tea house and there were a group of people outside looking forlorn and fatigued. They had come up in the opposite direction and were drained. And sadly without accommodation.

Our room was in an outside barn with an inside room that was not supposed to be let due to the lack of facilities like electricity and running water, but it was adequate for our needs.

As we ate dinner we could see, in the darkness, dozens of people walking down towards the village with their head torches shining. As they arrived they were turned away. I was sorry for them, but an elderly group of Americans from Wisconsin, who had been very depressed outside the tea house when we arrived, were allowed to sleep in a group on the floor of the tea house restaurant. At least they had shelter. It’s harsh up here.

Night night.