After returning from Kala Pattar for breakfast, we decided to shorten our trip by walking for longer each day, as it was so much easier walking downhill! The first day we walked a further 7 hours down to Periche, which is in the valley below Dingboche, where I stayed on the way up.
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| Periche Valley |
The following day saw a further 7 hour trek down to Namche, and the same guesthouse as on the way up. When we arrived it was very cloudy though, and we learned that as a result there had been no flights from Lukla for the past 3 days – really bad news for the hundreds of people stuck in Kathmandu who didn’t have much leeway in their itineraries. Quite a few people opted for the expensive option of a helicopter.
Thankfully in the morning the sky was clear, so we started walked down to Lukla to wait for a flight the next morning. When we passed the border for the national park, we heard that a plane had crashed in Lukla that morning – it seemed there was a problem with the landing gear and the aeroplane’s nose hit the runway. Thankfully no one was hurt though, and I think they just pushed it aside to resume the flights!
That evening in Lukla, after another long day we celebrated the end of our trek with a well earned Everest beer and the first meat for a while – a ‘chicken sizzler’
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| Finished! |
The next day we eventually got back to Kathmandu (after a 4 hour delay), where I had a shower, shave/massage at a Nepali barber, and Yan and I went for dinner in Everest Steak House before finishing the bottle of whisky we started before we left!
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| Damaged aeroplane |
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| Lukla Airport My guide for the trek was Chhatra Karki of Nepal Eco Adventure - thoroughly recommended! |
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