Namche Bazaar 11,306ft to Choplung 8,727ft
After the hard work of the last week we enjoyed a well earned rest day in Namche yesterday which we spent drinking coffee and eating cake. Today, we are back on the trail and saying farewell to the high mountains that have been our companion for the last week. In some ways I have completed what I came here to do, I have fulfilled my dream of seeing Everest, and more having trekked back to Namche via the Cho La Pass and Gokyo valley. But what we have done up to now is what many trekkers do on a visit to Nepal. What we are about to do however is a bit different, we are going to walk out to Jiri and the road head.
This will take us away from the Honey Pot that is the EBC trek and will be a chance for me to experience a very different side to the Nepal I have seen so far. There will still be trekkers, just not in the same number and like any country, away from the main ‘tourist’ areas you get to see the country as it is. I am looking forward to it. So we say a final goodbye to Namche Bazaar, I am fitter, stronger and certainly lighter than when I first arrived and we head off straight down the trail that takes us to the Hillary suspension bridge crossing the Dudh Khosi. About half way down, there is a viewpoint where Everest can be seen for the last time (or first if you are on the way up!)
We are fortunate, unlike on the way up it is clear today. An American, on his way to Namche and grateful for an excuse to stop takes a picture of us all, smiling and satisfied. We continue through the woods and down, down all the way to the Dudh Khosi. It’s a steep drop all the way to the river and we waste no time getting there. At the bridge it is good to hear the sound of the roaring ‘Milk River’ again. We carry on to the pretty, rhododendron surrounded village of Benkhar where we stop for lunch. Another American is in the lodge, a film producer from LA with two porters all to himself. After lunch we walk on past Phakding.
On the way down to Choplung it starts raining, the first rain we have experienced on the whole trek. It wasn’t much by UK standards, just a light shower in fact but it’s enough, at 9,000ft to start feeling cold and damp. We didn’t see the point of getting wet and so we booked into the lodge that we were sitting outside of having the conversation in Choplung.
Surprisingly we are the only ones in the lodge and I have a great nights sleep under a thick duvet that was on the bed. In the middle of the night, as most nights with the amount of liquid you need to drink on trek I was up for the toilet. The toilet in the lodge was a corrugated metal shed, outside the lodge, perched at the top of a narrow flight of loose, uneven stone steps with a thirty foot drop off the edge if you got a foot wrong! That certainly concentrated my mind at 3am.
For map and route details of this walk click ‘learn more’ below.
Choplung to Puiyan 9,173ft
Woke up at 6.30am after a good nights sleep in the cosy duvet. After breakfast we set off and almost immediately left the main EBC trail from Lukla airport behind us, dropping down and losing height fast as we skirt down past and below the airport. No rain today but the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it was cloudy. Although we have left the high mountains behind unfortunately we have not left the climbing behind as the trail to Jiri climbs up and over a total of five ridges. As a consequence and following the law of gravity, after the big down came an equally big up. At the top of the ridge we had lunch at a lodge conveniently positioned right at the top. From the lodge there were expansive views along the valley and we watched planes below us coming in to land at Lukla. The lodge owner told Mark that he owned another lodge up the trail in Puiyan so that is where we headed, arriving at about 4.20pm.
Leaving the main trail behind us today was interesting and exciting. The sudden lack of brightly clad trekkers and tour guides was noticeable, as was the replacement of yaks with Donkeys as the main source of transport. Not sure why this is but the trail does seem a little less rocky so maybe donkeys are better suited. Greenery has also returned with crops and some terracing on the hillsides. In the lodge there was a big group of Australians, family I think, on the way up to EBC and over dinner they slowly drank up the lodges complete supply of San Miguel.
For map and route details of this walk click ‘learn more’ below.
Puiyan to Jubing 5,499ft
Crickets, Crickets, and more Crickets! That was the soundtrack of our walk today. There wasn’t as much up and down as yesterday and this made for very pleasant walking. The sunshine has returned after a grey day yesterday and we walked through verdant, green terraced hills and picturesque little Nepali villages full of kids running around. As well as the crickets, because we are lower the birds have returned and the sound of birds and crickets followed us along the trail. The walking felt a little bit like walking through the tropical house at the zoo, warm, humid and green everywhere. I’ve never walked through jungle and I know this isn’t technically jungle, but it may be the closest I get to it. The small amount of rain that fell a couple of days ago has really affected the condition of the trail. It doesn’t help that the Donkey trains that regularly pass by us now tend to act as ploughs, churning up the path and turning it into a bit of a mud bath.
The six hour walk to Jubing was varied and interesting throughout with far more built up settlements than we have been used to seeing along the main EBC trail. People, getting on with their daily lives but we were always greeted with a smile and a friendly ‘Namaste’ as we passed by. On arrival at Jubing we walked to the far end of the village where the book said there was a nice lodge and ended up stopping in a small, cosy place with a roaring river next to it. We dropped a lot of height today and we are very low, five and a half thousand feet, the lowest since leaving Kathmandu.
For map and route details of this walk click ‘learn more’ below.
