Everest Every Day: Post 5

We woke up in Namche this morning and ate breakfast. Surprisingly, because a few days before I would’ve sworn that I would never eat it again in Nepal, I ordered a cheese omelet! We headed out and embarked on a relatively easy hike. We didn’t stop often, so Troy and I talked more about his childhood and we had a lot of fun taking pictures.

Also, apparently Ganesh didn’t drop his phone, it was stolen at the camp next to EBC. He had left his backpack in the dining room and a drunk guy took it out of his bag and sold it. When Ganesh called his phone, the guy who bought it said that Ganesh could buy it back if he’d come to get it. However, when Ganesh arrived he discovered that the phone had been broken, though the SIM card was still intact, and ended up walking 76 km total that day. On our way to Lukla, we saw a lot of cute kids. There was one kid in a blue jacket that demanded high-fives from all foreigners.

As we climbed up the last hill we saw many trekkers start their first day and laughed at them. There was even one woman who had put a flower in her hair! We said that they would all forget or abandon cleanliness and fashion after two or three days. We walked past the starting gate and got settled at the hotel.

We ate lunch at a restaurant and I worked on some more bracelets until we went back to the guest house. We ate dinner with Banu and the other porter, Giten Rai, and I gave Giten a bracelet and Banu two, for himself and for his sister. Banu made a really nice speech and, after talking to him, I learned that he has five sisters and a brother; he is the oldest. One of his sisters won the US Visa lottery and is now living in Alaska. Giten is one of five children, but he has a father while Banu does not. They both come from fishing villages. I also learned that Ganesh’s Christine was born on a festival day so no one was around and Ganesh had to steal his neighbor’s car and drove, for the first time, to the hospital with his wife. Christine was positioned sideways in her mother’s stomach, so Ganesh had to drive to get a government doctor to rearrange the baby’s position. When Ganesh saw Christine he was so loud that people thought he was crazy! After dinner, Banu, Giten, and Ganesh signed a map postcard for us. We did homework in our rooms and fell asleep.

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