This morning we woke up and ate breakfast, I had Tibetan Bread with chocolate! I also started working on another bracelet. The hike today consisted of very steep uphills and very steep downhills with no in-betweens. While we hiked up, I was despairing (not really but kind of) because people still on the beginning of their trek were going downhill and we were going uphill, but I was looking forward to inwardly ridiculing and pitying the other trekkers! On the way down, we saw a woman being carried on a stretcher and covered with blankets being transported to the nearest hospital. We thought that she was pregnant and expecting to give birth in a week or so. Then, we arrived at a village called Khumjung.
A couple of days before we had watched the 2015 film, Sherpa, in which a sherpa called Phurba starred. Khumjung is his home, and we are at a guest house owned by his family. We met his wife and two sons, all featured in the movie, and his newest daughter. She was very funny and played with us and Ganesh. She rode a very old and dirty-looking stuffed cat and a horse saddle.
I gave her some candy, and she had a really loud laugh that went off roughly every minute. We ate a really good pizza with a new vegetable that had a special flavor. Even though Phurba wasn’t at home, it was a really great experience to meet his family as people rather than characters in a movie. As we left the enormous village, which is about as big as Namche, we saw the people carrying the woman on a stretcher. An old woman walked beside her and carried a bundle of blankets in her arms. The woman had given birth on the trail, but the baby in the blankets didn’t make a sound and all the people looked worried. Troy says that he thinks the baby was born prematurely. I hope it was just sleeping. We kept walking, and in the outskirts of the village we passed a soccer field with handmade goal posts and yaks grazing on the grass while some village boys played. We hiked up a steep hill to a stupa and then down the steep mountain to Namche, stopping twice at scenic points for pictures.
We had gone down in two days what it had taken us five to climb! While we walked, Troy and I got to talking and I learned that his father had eaten mammoth meat in college! He went on an excavation expedition and they had leftover meat so they let the students eat it! As we entered the village, we saw a woman and a girl holding a mother cat and a very tiny baby kitten which we were allowed to pet! It was probably only a couple of days old! When we arrived at the hotel, we discovered that there was a problem. The people who used our rooms were supposed to leave that morning but had gotten sick and decided to stay an extra couple of days in Namche, leaving us without rooms. The hotel owner told us that there was one room in which we could stay even though it didn’t have proper beds. He led us to the hotel’s Prayer Room. Every Buddhist household has one, and it is the most special and revered room in a house. After a quick discussion, we agreed to stay. I took a shower, but before the others took one Ganesh came into the room and told us that he had dropped his phone on the hike and that someone had found it when he called the number. He said that he was running back to get it. He was running back up until where we had slept the previous night. After Aba, Troy, and Asher finished their showers, we headed to the Everest Bakery. However, on the way there we stopped to buy Troy five large yak bells. I also bought a small, round metal box and the woman who owned the store was so happy that she gave me six lengths of yak-hair string for free! We walked to the bakery and I tried to make a bracelet with the new string, but discovered that yak hair is very brittle and breaks easily so I had to stop and experimented on normal string but with different techniques instead. We ordered food, and when my yak sizzler arrived I was very happy. The yak steak that I had eaten at Bob Marley on the Annapurna wasn’t very good, but I decided to try yak one more time and was not disappointed. It was a little tough, but delicious! For dessert, I ate chocolate cake and homemade vanilla ice cream! We left after I made some bracelets because the bakery was hosting a wedding that night and went back to the hotel. I finished a bracelet that I had been working on and then did homework and blogged. After that, I went to sleep.
22-21-12-12-22…. 1-5-6 5-17-6-4-12……