Off to Everest Base Camp! (14-17 days est.)

Aaron, Katie, and I are making an attempt on Everest base camp tomorrow, flying out of Kathmandu to a tiny little airport in Lukla and then hiking for about a week to get to the base camp. The weather is supposed to be great, and we are currently planning on doing an extra pass/glacier/2 days on a high-altitude lake. Should take a little over 2 weeks, and internet may be hard to come by.

I'll have my GPS and I'll be sure to upload the tracks so you can see where we go.

Kathmandu is wonderful; clean, great food, incredible architecture at Durbar square, and plenty of infrastructure  to cater to trekking/rafting/mountain biking(!). There are so many tiny trekking gear stores around us that it's like living in a spread-out version of REI, except everything is fake North Face, Columbia, and Mammut.

Shaky Bus to Kathmandu

Your panes are loose,
The seats are stuck,
The steering is held in with luck-
and glue.

You drive so fast,
You turn so quick,
I think that woman's feeling sick-
me too.

Let's not forget,
We're at the rear,
Speedbump flights and sleepless nights, I fear-
so true.

Over dirt roads,
For fourteen hours,
As we start to doubt you'll make it through-
you do.

Shaky bus to Kathmandu

Trek 2 Done; Kathmandu Next

We successfully completed our trek through West Sikkim, passing through Kecheopalri lake, Yoksum, and Tashiding.

Kecheopalri was easily the smallest and arguably the most beautiful of the three stops; the lake is completely surrounded by verdant hills and prayer flags on its shores. Legend has it that it is in the shape of Goddess Tara’s footprint. A walkway with prayer wheels leads up to the edge of the water, and koi swarm the shallows. I managed to go alone at sunset, and it was incredibly peaceful.

Katie and I made the 15 km hike to Yoksum the next day. This larger village is certainly geared for trekking, and we saw a number of Indian tourist groups heading out with large backpacks. Up on a nearby hill, the disused monastery lost a good portion of its wall on the main prayer hall during the earthquake. The coronation throne on the other side of town marks the place where 3 lamas converged from across Sikkim to form the kingdom in 1641. The next morning we geared up for our 21 km hike with tibetan bread covered in yak cheese.

Beetle on the way to Yoksum. ~1.5" long

Tashiding is home to an incredibly monastery compound just 3 km up the hill. Its prayer hall also unfortunately sustained the most damage; the doors were shut and the yard out front was littered with an alarming amount of rock debris and plaster fragments of ancient holy paintings. A section further down the hill had a great garden of enormous chortens. One of them instantly absolves any onlooker of sin. I’ll see how well that actually worked.

On the way to the monastery, a sign with the standard Tibetan Buddhist mantra, om mani padme hum in the middle. See if you can spot me.

Now, a whole day and 6 different jeep trips later, we’re in Siliguri making our final preparations for a short trip to Kathmandu/Nepal.

Go west (Sikkim) young man

We're back in west sikkim, about to visit Kecheopari Lake, Yuksom, and Tashiding Monastery. It should take about 3 days. Internet might be hard to come by. The good news is that the lake is supposed to be a really nice place to kick back and relax.

We went with the Germans to see the Himalayan zoo and its red pandas. I'll put up some pictures, including a photo with all of us and an Indian family.

We found our friend Katie standing under the Gandhi statue about 3 days ago, and have been exploring the rest of Gangtok with her. Durga Puja has put the town and the rest of Sikkim at a standstill. Transportation is even more difficult, but that should change soon.

Katie and I had high tea at the Elgin in Pelling. Nice tea, sandwiches without crusts, and the clouds dancing around snowcapped peaks in the sunset.

Aaron has stayed back in Gangtok, to catch up with us partway through our trek.
Hopefully work will come through after that.

Anthony

Sikkim’s Capital

Woke up bright and early to wait 4 hours (ugh) for the share jeep to fill up so we could see Rumtek, a large and very famous Buddhist monastery close to Gangtok. Very nice interior on the prayer hall, plus a center for Buddhist study behind it. The center showed significant structural damage from the quake: large cracks on interior beams. I was pleased to see a number of passive solar water heaters. This might be something to implement in the future in our favorite village in Sainji, Uttarakhand.

Rumtek Monastery, near Gangtok

One of the three solar water heaters on the roof at Rumtek.

Waiting for our taxi ride back, a cat mewed incessantly until I fed it the rest of my spicy hot Indian Cheeto-like snack. Turns out Indian cats are much more hearty than their American counterparts.

After we returned by taxi, Aaron and I hiked up to the ridge park to see the ancient monastery near the royal palace. Incredible interior paintings of Buddhist gurus and deities, the best we have seen in India. We met a couple German volunteers repairing cracks on the murals caused by the earthquake. Seems like a cool job, plus it gives them incredible bragging rights. No pictures inside, or I'd show the intricacy of the artwork and the painstaking efforts of the restoration work.

Royal Chapel and Monastery, Sikkim

Dinner was fancy at Snow Lion in Hotel Tibet (i.e. HH the Dalai Lama stays here). Excellent food and service for $8. It was a nice change from momo (tibetan dumplings), thukpa (tibetan soup), chow mein, and fried rice.