Nov 2 2024 – Namche to Khumjung to Khunde to Namche

My sleep schedule since I’ve been in Nepal has basically been nowhere time. I crash after dinner and wake up in the absurd wee AM hours. I haven’t actually found a downside to that though. Upside is I hit the trail running before other people finish their breakfasts, so I have some solitude for a while. But since today I didn’t need to hit the trail running I paid more attention to the here.

I watched the sunrise for the first time since being in Nepal. I’ve been awake for every sunrise since I got here, just didn’t pay attention. I actually didn’t even know those snow covered peaks were there – they were obscured by clouds yesterday. It was a pretty tranquil experience – all you could hear in the entire village were birds and the monks chanting in the monastery. That was pretty amazing.

Moving on with the day, today is what is referred to in Himalayan trekking parlance as a “rest day”. What that means is you sleep at the same altitude you did the night before. Generally during the day you’re doing no resting. The mantra is “climb high, sleep low”. This helps the human body acclimate to the decreasing amount of oxygen. I brought along a pulse oximeter to keep tabs on my blood oxygen saturation (SpO2). Last night it dropped to 82%. For reference, if you show up at an emergency room back in the states they’ll start you on supplemental oxygen if you’re below 95%. Good times.

I actually started off my day looking for the Namche bazar dog sanctuary. It’s allegedly the highest animal shelter in the world, and I have a background is animal welfare, so it was a place I was interested in visiting. Couldn’t find it though. I asked a couple locals who had no idea what I was talking about. Disappointing. But!

While I was looking for that, at one point I looked up and saw this:

Pictures of giant mountains taken, I moved on to the climb high portion of my day. The plan was to head up to see the villages of Khumjung and Khunde. I started with Khumjung.

The trail there from namche starts by basically heading straight up for 1,000 vertical feet.

Once I got to the top (12,604 ft) I could see straight down into Khumjung. There’s also a pretty good view of Ama Deblam.

The mountain is named after a necklace customarily worn by Nepali brides, because prior to global warming erasing it from existence there used to be a hanging glacier near the summit that resembled the necklace.

Khumjung and Khunde are actually in a valley in a plateau above Namche. And I actually found both very beautiful. It’s where all the nak farming happens. Don’t know what a nak is? I didn’t either until today. A nak is a hybrid between yak and cows. Yak tend to only be used at extremely high altitudes. Nak can handle the middle altitudes better. The whole valley is broken down into stone walled pastures.

It’s also actually flat, which is a rarity in this land where flat usually means “less than 90 degree slope”

In spite of being basically a flat 10 minute walk from each other, Khumjung and Khunde each have their own monasteries. The Khumjung monastery has an alleged yeti skull. I was hoping to see it, but the monks at either monastery weren’t entertaining visitors today.

From Khunde I made my way back to Namche. Once you get up and over the ridge between Khunde and Namche the trail kind of stops being a trail and becomes an insanely steep twisting mess of flash flood channels. I took no pictures at that point. I was just trying to get down the mountain without tripping and rolling the whole way down.

Tomorrow I’m still in the air about where to go. My original itinerary was to go to Phortse, which involves climbing to 13,000 feet before dropping to 11,800 feet before climbing to 12,800 feet. My other option is to go to Tengbouche, which involves dropping to 10,800 before climbing to 12,800. No options that don’t involve having to go down and then up again . . .