Since we were back in the world of wifi, our first morning in Namche Bazaar I was supposed to Skype with my family at 645 pm their time or 9 am my time (or so I thought…having a 10 hour 45 min time difference is difficult people!). I ended up counting the wrong way in calculating the time difference - my bad….I blame the altitude - but luckily thanks to my inability to sleep I woke up at 530 am and noticed messages from 2 hours ago from my sister asking me if I was ready to Skype. Whoops!

I pulled on my warm clothes, ran downstairs to the common room, and had a nice little chat with the family for the first time since I started and probably the last time until I return to this mystical land of wifi on my way down.

Today was our ‘rest day’ in Namche. Rest day in trekker’s speak means you still have to take a 3-5 hour acclimatization walk at some point during the day a.k.a. you hike up a few hundred meters in elevation and then hike back down so you sleep at a lower elevation than you hiked that day.

Since we had trekked in from Jiri/Shivalaya and had been at this elevation before (Namche is at 3,440 m or 11,290 ft and we’d been at 3,700 m before) we didn’t technically need an acclimatization walk but it was nice out and we figured regardless it couldn’t hurt in aiding us in getting used to the altitude we’d be facing over the coming days.

As a side note, just to give you a visual glimpse of what the rise and fall in elevation that we’d been dealing with for the last week, here’s a photo that Benny had with him from home (in meters):

As you can see, Namche Bazaar is located between days 9 and 10. So everything you see before that is what we’ve already hiked.

See? I wasn’t kidding when I bitched and moaned about all the ups and downs we did. The struggle was real my friends.

Fun fact: if you add up all the ascents we’ve done since the beginning, the distance comes out to being greater than Mount Everest is high.

One of the downsides of traveling without a guide is that you don’t always know the names of the mountains you’re looking at or fun facts about the area that you’re in.

However multiple times throughout our hike so far we’d met either locals or guides on the trail who were more than happy to supply us with this information.

This time we met a local who worked at the Edmund Hillary Hospital nearby. He told us a bit about the area (as well as the path to get back down…thanks!) and, at the top of the hill, showed us to (supposedly) the highest altitude airstrip in the world at almost 3800m.

The walk down afforded us some beautiful views of the mountains (which were slowly being overtaken by clouds as they do every afternoon it seems) as well as Namche Bazaar from above.

The remainder of our lovely ‘rest day’ involved restocking some snacks (and treating myself to Sour Cream & Onion Pringles), toilet paper, and money in town, and gorging ourselves on more delicious Western sandwiches, cookies, and drinks. Don’t judge - after the week we’d had it was wholly necessary and good for the soul.

Spoilers for next time: a new friend, welcoming back Everest, and the first real taste of the cold to come.

For all my Everest Base Camp trek posts visit here!