Khumjung (3780 m) – Milinggo (3750 m)

Although we were going to inch closer to our final destination, our trek from Khumjung till our destination for the day was nothing but a sheer waste in terms of altitude gain. In the normal course, trekkers proceed from Namche (3440 metres) to a place by the name Tengboche (3780 metres). Trekking about 300 metres higher than Namche, we had come over to Khumjung that lies pretty much off-track, on the previous day, which trekkers on this route prefer to choose as an acclimatisation day. Feeling fit and fine, we decided to proceed over to Tengboche, which is situated at almost the same altitude as Khumjung. On second thoughts though, this might just prove to be a boon in disguise, as we would get enough time for altitude acclimatisation. An important fact to realise though was that we were moving in the Northeast direction, and temperatures were going to dip hereon.

In less than half an hour from Khumjung, we reached at a four-pronged bifurcation, the first trail of which was the one that we had taken from Khumjung to reach here. The second trail led to Gokyo, which happens to be another favourite trekking route in the Everest region. The third one led to Namche, winding along another hill (different from the one we had climbed). The last one was of interest to us as it was pointing towards Tengboche, our destination of the day.

Given the fact that we were not to gain any altitude this day did not in any way translate into something like a long walk over plane ground. This day was in fact a classic example of how much of a waste of effort a walk can be. Starting from an altitude of 3780 metres, the trail goes down to a village called Phunki Tenga, situated at 3250 metres. Over 500 metres of a drop that’s gradual to start with at one point suddenly ends up becoming a steep descent till one reaches the banks of the Dudh Koshi. I recall how minuscule the Dudh Koshi looked from the Khumjung-Namche-Gokyo-Tengboche bifurcation. And the thought about this being one hell of a climb on the way back strikes almost immediately. Of course there isn’t much time to sit and brood over that matter. The trail following the descent is an inviting steep uphill climb given the fact that over 600 metres of altitude gain lies ahead. “What goes down has to come up” – all in a day’s work! And till now it is still part of our thought process. Ahem!

After reaching at this altitude it was obvious though that at least some part of every coming day would be a demanding climb. One should never think of how much more has to be covered or how bad the terrain would be. The only thing to worry about should be the next step to be taken. At this point, I would like to quote Anup: “The best part of trekking is that one always lives in the present”. Well said!

As we moved past the bifurcation after taking the Tengboche trail, we got some breathtaking views of Thamserku and Ama Dablam peaks. Along the way, we’d seen a different face of Thamserku from our lodge at Khumjung, and now we were seeing another one here. This probably was the widest of them all and the perspective of the magnitude of Thamserku that I had in mind was proved way too wrong by a rescue helicopter that looked way too minuscule as it was flying across the face of the mountain. ‘Massive’ – was my only reaction.

After walking for a long distance on an exposed ridge, we soon were walking downhill through an area densely populated by trees. This was the steepest part of the descent, where the gradient was a whopping 70 degrees at times. Our rate of descent was extremely fast here as I tried in vain to sprint at the speed at which the Sherpa porters were descending. In no time we found ourselves by the Dudh Koshi yet again. Less than couple of hours back, the Dudh Koshi appeared no more than a mere white line to us. We were at Phunki Tenga, at 3250 metres, which meant we were even lower than Namche Bazaar! We saw a couple of water driven Buddhist prayer wheels here. Quite a unique way of moving the prayer wheels I must say.

What followed later was an uphill slog that went on and on and on where we saw a considerable number of trekkers taking regular rest breaks. The slant was nasty enough to force the Sherpas to take halts as well. Of course they were carrying heavy luggage as compared to any other trekker. We kept on moving slowly and steadily, conserving all possible energy. I remember this trail particularly since we saw the first victim suffering from some form of altitude sickness who seemed to have given up on continuing further. It certainly wasn’t a case where the person did not have the energy to move further uphill. The poor female had given up mentally, as she was sobbing while her teammate appeared to be consoling her. We felt sorry at this stage and hoped strongly that we never came across such a situation. Anyhow, we were too busy in maintaining our rhythmic walk to find out the precise details of what had happened and neither did we want to make her feel even more sorry by just standing and looking at her sympathetically.

Walking, as an activity, generates quite a bit of warmth within the body. And when this happens while trekking, no matter how cold it is I perspire. To combat this, I got rid of my sweater, and the decision of shedding a few more clothes on the way was usually based on how chilly the wind was. Past noon, the wind starts getting chillier by the minute.

Walking past a winding turn, I saw a typical Buddhist structure in the distance – and I was quick to realise that it was a monastery. When I had been to Darjeeling in 2003, I had visited innumerable such monasteries, and I could not have been mistaken after looking at this cloister.

Tengboche monastery is an important Buddhist monastery in the mountains of the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal. It is in the Khumbu region of northeast Nepal, the home of the Sherpas. Tengboche is famous because of its spectacular and unique location. It lies on the main route to the Base Camp of Mount Everest and offers the first clear views of the highest mountain in the world. Tengboche became known to the world after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa made the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. A lot has changed since those days when Tengboche was remote and inaccessible. Today over 25,000 people come every year to enjoy the beauty of Tengboche and splendor of the mountains.

The fact that we had reached Tengboche this soon took some time to sink in. I grabbed my digital camera, took a quick few snaps, and rested at the steps of the monastery while Anup and Vinod were interested in taking a look around the monastery. We had started our day at 09:18 am, which was late by any standards for starting for a trek like this one. The chilly wind had taken its toll on me on this leg of the trek, leaving me in a shivering state. By now even the down jacket did not seem to make any difference. I was desperate for getting to a warmer place as soon as possible.

Thankfully, Anup and Vinod did not take too much time looking around the monastery. I use the word ‘thankfully’ because I was nervously worrying how long my body could continue putting up a brave fight against the cold wave sweeping over Tengboche at that moment. Adding any problems to the recently developed cough. There was one good thing in store though. Rawal bhai had no plans of spending the remaining part of the day at Tengboche. Firstly because Tengboche happened to be on a hill, thereby guaranteeing lower temperatures. Secondly, there were no more than three to four lodges at Tengboche to halt at, which meant the probability of finding a place to halt was difficult. To compound this problem was the fact that we had not started off early and that meant we had squeezed out all our chances of reserving accommodations despite covering ground in good time.

My resistance against the cold was about to break anytime. Carrying the backpack made me perspire more, the chilly wind left me quivering. The destination of the day was Deboche, a small village that can be reached in under half an hour from Tengboche. The fact that mattered most was that Deboche was considerably warmer than Tengboche, firstly because it was not right on top of the hill as Tengboche, and secondly because it was completely surrounded by trees. Upon reaching Deboche my body virtually dropped dead and I mentally felt at ease just by the thought of getting cosy in a warm dining room with warm blankets – things that would help me recoup fast. But my daydream was cut short – Lal bhai delivered some bad news. All lodges at Deboche were occupied, and we had no way but to move to the next camp. I gave up.

Rawal bhai told us that our new destination was Pangboche village, which is located at about 4000 metres ASL, an altitude gain of another 250 metres and a walking time of about 2 hours. I preferred to have lunch at Deboche because the body needed to refuel at the earliest. I had lost a lot of body fluid due to perspiration, and the intake of water was a must too. I gulped down a lot of boiled water (we never had any drink that was cold, not even cold water all through our trek). Due to the exertion, my brain was instructing me to eat, but its natural in these circumstances to lose appetite (after exertion). I somehow forced down a cheese omelette. After eating a meal, one tends to feel a bit cold since there is a sudden blood rush towards the stomach to kick off the digestion process. Although temporary, it was yet another factor working against my cold.

After lunch, I took about 15 minutes to gather myself. The body was ready for the hike, there was some resistance from the thought process though. But I got over it, and decided to carry on. The primary reason was that I had no other option! Meanwhile, Rawal bhai got upset because of the fact that Lal bhai had not lived up to the task of walking ahead and securing accommodation for us. Enroute Tengboche, Lal bhai was walking with us for almost all the time to which we had no objections whatsoever. He was a human being finally, and we considered him as a friend rather than picking an attitude of treating him as a servant.

I remember clearly, it was not more than 5 minutes after we departed from Deboche when a person who seemed pretty much a localite, walked up to me and told me “Your porter is waiting ahead for you”. I was in no mood to register what he said, primarily because I thought there was no way a stranger would know about Lal bhai or me. Another 5 minutes went by. I kept on walking (I was leading the way from Deboche) and sure enough I saw Lal bhai waiting for us at a place where we were least expecting him to be. Once we’d left Deboche, we had mentally prepared ourselves for a 2-hour trek. And we landed up at one small village by the name Milinggo, situated at an altitude of 3750 metres. Being less cold in comparison to Tengboche and Deboche as well made it a very welcome place to stay at. We had ascended up to Tengboche (3870 metres) and were going to sleep here at 3750 metres. Sticking on to one of the most important trekking principles in the Himalayas – ‘Work high, sleep low’.

That is the beauty of a teahouse trek, where one happens to find these lodges or teahouses at a frequency of every half an hour till the altitude is fewer than 4000 metres. Above that things change considerably. Anyways, this was a pleasantly unexpected end to my woes. Milinggo happened to a place smaller than our first camp Phakding – which I felt till now was the smallest of all camps. Not even half a dozen of lodges could be seen amongst the abundance of the terraced potato fields. I considered it was immense good luck that we managed to get lodging here after the Tengboche and Deboche experiences.

The first thing I did was to slip into thermal wear and change clothes. Then I covered myself by a warm sweater and the down jacket. I then took resort in the dining room where the central heating system came to my rescue. In about half an hour my body temperature was quite comfortable – the cold had pretty much worn off. Hot lemon helped further and soon after we had a good dinner. But this was not before we had to spend our typical afternoon sessions – where reading books, having lengthy chats or taking notes were the only things we used to do. Firstly doing some activity that kept us away from sleeping during daytime was a must – we had strict instructions from Rawal bhai to not sleep in the afternoon, which could result in the body going into a vicious biological cycle. The typical routine of three square meals, walking during day time and sleeping early was the best way to stay healthy and away from any problems. Sleeping during the day could also result into sleepless nights, another horrid thing.

At Namche Bazaar, I had made it a point to get a personal copy of the book ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer. Vinod had got a copy for himself too. At times it used to happen that I and Vinod would get totally engrossed in reading and Anup would have to while away time all by himself. But more often than not, I used to spend my afternoons in taking notes of the events of the day – a thing I loved to do firstly, and felt was a must in order to complete my vision of writing this book.

From the day’s overall experience I got a glimpse of how things would change hereon with respect to weather conditions, going from bad to worse. I suspected the night at Milinggo would give me shivers. To get a feel of the actual temperature, we stepped out from the cosy interiors of our lodge. To be true, that was not the main intention of stepping out of the lodge – it was to trace the steps to the toilet, which was not within the lodge in the ‘Evergreen Lodge and Restaurant’ in Milinggo. Generally, the selling point for the lodges at prominent halts in the Khumbu valley is the western style toilet (commode). Milinggo is just a small speck on the map of the Lukla – EBC trail.

The view of the star-studded sky that we saw at Milinggo was unforgettable. It was nothing short of a dream for stargazers who in my opinion would never get to see so many celestial objects due to the city lights and pollution. Standing here amidst a terraced potato field, gazing at the mind-blowing view and Dudh Koshi’s sound lapping against the rocks brought about the perfect harmony. Probably a common experience in the Himalayas, but felt nothing short of divine to us this being such a rare occurrence. In an attempt to experience as much of it as we could, we stood outside our lodge but the icy wind pinched us, as if sending us a warning signal to retreat to the warm insides of the lodge. We cuddled up into our sleeping bags and pulled over a nice thick blanket over to keep us cosy throughout the night.

Luckily enough for us, the night was not too cold and we managed to get a good night's sleep. And its only a good sleep that can provide the best start for a fresh day ahead, which is a must for getting the required amount of energy. Stepping out of the cosy confines of the lodge room was not exactly an inviting offer, but I always felt charged up and fresh in the morning, excited about the trek to follow. We were going to cross the altitude of 4000 metres and our destination for the next day was a place (Pheriche) that has earned dual superlatives. Pheriche (4240 metres ASL) is the highest altitude on Earth with human inhabitation and is known to be the coldest region in the entire Khumbu valley..