Trek Day 10 - Gorak Shep to Dingboche - 11/10/10

Today we started heading down.  We were pretty tired as we set out, as sleep was a bit hard to come by last night.  The lodge we've been staying in has paper thin walls and no ceiling between the rooms.  Last night, there was a snorer on the other side of the wall from Krista.  This guy doesn't just snore -- he rattles the building.  Seriously, he could knock a brick house off of its foundation.  We had our heads sandwiched between pillows with earplugs in and we could still hear him loud and clear.  Krista kept knocking on the wall hoping to get him to stop and, after about 40 minutes, he finally rolled over and stopped.  But then the guy across the hall got a phone call.  Not only was the ring loud and he waited about 8 rings to answer, but he had no concept of an "inside voice".  Honestly, there's a 3G tower in this village and yelling just wasn't necessary.   Eventually it got quiet enough to sleep.

This morning we set out for Dingboche (13,976 ft) to catch up with the rest of our group.  We walked down past Lobuche, past all the chortas, down the nasty ridge (which was a little hard on the knee) and back past Dughla.  After crossing the icy river, we headed up a gentle slope to the top of the ridge above the Pheriche valley.  It was a nice flat ridge with scattered homes and grazing yaks.  The mountain views were stunning and it was a peaceful walk.  Long, but peaceful.  At the end of the ridge there was a stupa and then switchbacks down to Dingboche.  I have to say that little ups in the trail that had my heart racing and my lungs gasping just a few short days ago are so much easier now.  There's really something to be said for acclimation.

Heading down to Dinboche

When we arrived at the lodge, we could not find the doctors nor either of their porters.  Kumar went through the village thinking that they had probably changed lodges, but the owners of our lodge said that they had gone to the next village.  We were getting ready to head out, but then Kopil managed to get the on the phone.  They had gone on to Phortse, which is 5 hours away.  We resigned ourselves to the fact that the group was probably split for the rest of the trip.

Clouds and fog rolled in this afternoon and things got cold.  But this place had a shower stall outside and I decided to go for it.  The water was propane heated and very hot, but I could only get it to come out in a trickle.  This was by far the coldest shower of my life.  When I got out, dried off and got in my clothes, I couldn't get to the dining room fast enough.  Unfortunately, they wouldn't start the fire until 5:00 sharp.  We ordered hot tea, wrote in our journals, and read our books.  Then it happened: the snorer walked in as did panic.  But luckily, he was in a different part of the lodge and we were able to sleep just fine.  We were worried for a while though.