Friends in the High Places

“If it can be remedied, why be unhappy?  If it can’t be, why worry at all?”

I’m starting to see why the people here are so spiritual.  This place is definitely inspirational.  The people here all seem very happy, the children laughing and playing, we saw a young boy playing chase with his dog this morning and a 2 year old reading a book (OK at least she was holding the book).  There is quite a bit of poverty here, but yet you don’t feel sorry for the people because they seem completely content.  There is a bit of building going on though, so it looks like they are benefiting from the boom in trekking.

Today we moved from Phakding up to Namche, up the famous Namche Hill.  We gained about 3,000 feet from yesterday, so we’ll send a few days here in Namche to acclimatize before moving up.  Right now we don’t feel like we need 3 days here, but no sense getting behind the curve at this point. It was a pretty mellow pace, and a pretty easy day, and we got hailed on which was good because it held down the dust.

For acclimatization purposes, it’s better to go slower for a longer period of time (heart rate under 120) than to go faster for a shorter period of time.  Tomorrow we’ll probably hike up to the school that Sir Edmund Hillary founded and in general we’ll try to keep active.  We’re going to get up around 5 AM and if it’s clear, we’ll hike up to the top of the hill to get our first view of Everest and Lhotse.

I’m expecting we’ll see quite a few “famous” people here.  Today we ran into a super strong climber who is a well-known porter on Aconcagua and put in a new route on the South face when I was down there a few years ago.  He’s here to climb Lhotse as well, so we asked him to kick in some nice steps for us!  I’m definitely looking forward to meeting some of the legendary figures from mountaineering over the next few weeks.