EVEREST TREK : DAY 1

The Trek Begins: Day1 Shivalaya to Bhandar

Sunday 10 March

Breakfast before starting for Everest

It rained during the night but when we got up at 6am it was dry and the road outside looked like there hadn't been raining. We read for an hour then had breakfast, cornflakes and apples, the coffee was very sweet and milky. It was after 8 am when we made a start and the track out of the valley was very steep for the first hour. The bright red rhododendron bushes that skirted the edges of the path managed to distract us from the tough ordeal. Once the initial steep section was over the path got wider and though still going up it wasn't so tough.

Climbing out of Shavalaya

 The views back down into the valley with the houses of Shivalaya nestling beside the river, that wound down the valley, were beautiful and getting steadily smaller the higher we climbed. There were still lots of habitation dotted along the path and some small hamlets with tea houses and lodges. The houses had small plots of land and our guide point out some garlic growing in one of them. The livestock on these tiny smallholdings were mainly goats, a few cows and lots of tiny chickens chasing after the mother hen. Halfway up we came across a group that had left Shivalaya a while before us, they were French and having a break. They had been over in Pokara to do the Annapurna treks but there was too much snow and had transferred to the Everest region instead. We walked with them towards the top but they stopped earlier at a lodge to have lunch while we carried on.

Mani walls at Deorali

Moira was struggling on this first day not having done any steep hills for some time. I was managing all right and I carried her daypack for the last hour to Deorali, 2705 metres, where we stopped for lunch. It was a group of lodges clustered on a ridge that separates the valleys of the Khimti Khola (khola = river in Nepalese) and the Likhu Khola. In the centre of the street between the lodges was a series of mani walls, stone tablets with Bhudaist prayers inscribed with mantras, similar to the prayer wheels we saw in the centre of towns and villages in the Anapurna region. We had a nice lunch at one of the lodges, vegetable noodle soup with Tibetan bread to dip in, and our usual flask of tea. We were joined by the Italian couple we met yesterday and had a chat about walking in different countries. Before continuing our walk we visited the loo which was found in a building where they made yak cheese, the equipment was still there but production had ended. As we were leaving we saw the Canadian couple from the bus having lunch at another lodge.

What are these goats looking at?

The name of the village, Deorali, means pass and it was situated on a col. We had come up one side and now began the descent down the other. It was steep to begin with and our hiking poles assisted us, I only fell once. Soon the path began to level out and we were much quicker, reaching Bhandar in just over an hour from leaving Deorali. On entering Bhandar there was a large gompa or Buddhist temple with two chortens or shrines, shaped like an elaborate cairn. Our accommodation for the night was slightly further on and as soon as we got in had a lovely hot shower followed by a flask of tea. The weather was turning cold and it was bitter sitting in the dining room, we soon headed for our room and lay on the bed in our sleeping bags reading until dinner time. The French group we saw earlier passed, they were continuing on to the next village of Kinja. This was probably a better idea rather than sitting around with nothing to do in the cold. But Moira was sore and tired so the rest was better course of action and she would be strong for tomorrow.

Buddhist temple at Bhandar

For dinner we had another bowl of hot noodle soup and some Tibetan bread then shared a vegetable curry and rice. It wasn't very spicy hot but was filling. It was still cold down stairs so it was back up to the bedroom and into our sleeping bags, by 8 pm we were sleeping. During the night there was another violent thunder storm and the rain was heavy but in the morning everything was dry again and a bright blue sky.

Our lodge at Bhandar