We woke to sunny beautiful weather and green.  I haven’t seen green in a couple of weeks.  You forget how much you miss that. 

This is a very nice tea house. When I finally walked in the place the first night it was full of hikers. I was a little embarrassed at how I looked, smelled etc. It is pretty bad when you feel self conscious around people who have only gone a few days without a shower.  It didn’t help that I was sweaty and alone.  Trekkers travel in groups or maybe it is packs.  I am also impressed by how well dressed a lot of these people are.  I pity the poor porter who is lugging all that designer hiker wear around.  Fortunately Bill pulled in about 15 minutes later not looking much better than me.  We ate our dinner and retired quietly.

But this morning I already felt better having had a solid nights sleep with only sporadic coughing.  Then there are the decisions.  I only had one change of clothes and they were all dirty but boy did I want one of those showers.  At this tea house you tell them 15 minutes ahead and they heat water and carry it up in five gallon buckets to a big tank on the roof.  It takes at least one day for clothes to dry so if I wanted to put on clean clothes I would have to wait two days for that shower.  My personal comfort or that of those around me?  Man was that shower nice.

One of my pass times in places like this is try to guess where everyone is from.  Some are easy, Brits, Aussies, Kiwi’s.  There have been Bulgarians, Czechs, Italians, Russians, one lonely Canadian (eh?) and a smattering of others.  I’m always amazed at how many of these people speak English and speak it well.  Even the Canadian guy.  It is enjoyable to get to know these people – my wife would be proud of me.   Most are very interested about climbing Everest so that is a good beginning point.  Besides we all share a little lunacy spending our “vacation” hiking in the Himalaya.

There is a yak “corral” that backs up to the tea house.  In the Khumbu a “fence” is a stone wall and this corral is surrounded by a three foot tall “fence”.  There are several baby yaks (yaklets?) that I have found fascinating to watch.  They are barely walking but have already learned that sideways stare that says “dumb tourist”.  Yak life isn’t easy but the “yakboys” really appear to care for them.  Since these ranchers are usually on foot they use persuasion more than force to insure yak compliance.  The worst I’ve seen is them throwing pebbles at distracted members of the herd.  Every once in a while you will be in a tea house and look up to see a yak staring in at you through the window.

Yak is on the menu but I usually avoid it.  The primary reason being that what winds up on the menu is what has died along the way – often of old age.  There are no slaughter houses in the Khumbu.   It is tough and stringy.  Canned fish and on rare occasion chicken are the other meats available.  I am assuming the chickens have been killed in a yak stampede or something because I don’t think they raise them for food either.  The fish have been hauled from KTM.  For a people who have never seen a live fish they must think they all come in a can with a pull top.

We’ll spend the next few days napping in the sun room, eating with new appetites and gradually recovering.  I’ll visit the local HRA clinic to make sure everything is okay, work on some technical issues with our high altitude rebreather system, read a couple of books, and generally be worthless.  We will be here until the fourth when we will make the trip back to base camp for our final summit push.  When I come through here again I will on my way home either triumphant or with a back pack full of “what ifs”.  Such is mountaineering.