Hi, I'm Sumi

Remember this? A speck of a monastery floating in the mist on a far ridge above the village, a whole valley away. Back when we first spotted it, it was barely a smudge in the fog, the kind of place that looks like it’s deliberately not wanting to be found. Nicholas took one look and decided it was a main quest he absolutely had to complete.

He was still sick, still coughing, and the smart move was to rest. So obviously he went looking for a way up instead. And he reached it, eventually, three-quarters of the way up the hill before the building finally stopped hiding and resolved into something real.

But getting there is the whole story, so let’s back up.

The Hunt

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Here’s the problem: there was no marked trail. Just a hillside full of paths that all looked promising and then dead-ended, or split, or wandered off toward someone’s potato field. Nicholas spent the rest days doing reconnaissance. Up one route, back down. Up another, back down. Slightly higher each time, mapping the hill by trial and error like he was clearing fog off a minimap.

Eventually he found one that kept going. Up through the pines, past stone walls and prayer flags, higher than any of the false starts. This was the one.

And then he hit the gate. And the gate won.

He climbed all that way, found the right path at last, and ran straight into this thing: a few wooden bars laid across the trail. And he stopped. He looked at it, concluded the monastery was closed, and walked back down the mountain.

It’s a cow gate. It is the lowest-effort obstacle a Himalayan hillside can produce. The bars just slide out and lift away. Its entire job is to inconvenience livestock, who are, on average, smarter about it than he was that day. A wall of sticks meant for cows successfully repelled Nicholas like a confused heifer.

He only figured it out later that you can just move the bars. Slid them out, walked through, slid them back, because he’s not an animal. (For the record, I was in the backpack the whole time, judging. Both times.)

Getting There

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There were ponies working the village, hauling supplies around. The cows, on the other hand, mostly just wandered the trails getting in the way. (More on the cows later.)

And then the steps. The final approach is a staircase of rough stone climbing straight up to the building, because of course the reward for finding the unmarked path is more climbing.

There’s a large, beautifully painted prayer wheel, and directly behind it, a sign for the toilet. The sacred and the practical, sharing a wall. Even monasteries have priorities.

Inside, a covered courtyard with a mandala painted right into the floor, leading toward the prayer hall. I stayed in the bag for this part. You don’t bring a bear out in a working temple. It’s disrespectful, and I have a reputation to maintain.

Young monks were out on the lawn, robes drying on a line, a dog supervising. Regular life, at altitude, with the entire Himalaya as a backyard.

Bringing the Girls

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Pokin and Po On had heard all about the monastery and were, understandably, jealous. So once they started feeling stronger, Nicholas became a guide.

It didn’t happen all at once. Pokin was still weak, so it was a build. A little higher one day. A little higher the next. Until the day they both made it all the way up.

The climb also produced the cow incident. Somewhere on the way up, Po On vanished. Five minutes pass. Nicholas is standing there going where the heck is Po On, and finally trudges back down the trail to find her frozen in place, held hostage by cows. A few of them had claimed the path and she was too scared to push past, with no idea you can simply tell a cow to move. So it stood there. And so did she. Indefinitely. A standoff she was losing.

Nicholas groaned, walked up, went “sha! sha!”, slapped a few rumps, and the cows grudgingly shuffled aside about three steps, exactly enough for Po On to scurry through. Then he made fun of her the entire rest of the way up for getting held captive by cows. Correct response. They’re cows.

The viewpoint at the top is the payoff, and it does not disappoint. Mountains on one side, the whole forested valley dropping away on the other, and the village they’d been staring up at it from now a cluster of dots far below. From up here, the smudge was looking down on everything else. Role reversal. I respect it.

Evening Prayer and the Third Monastery

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Nicholas went back up alone that evening, because of course he did. This was now his fifth or sixth lap of the same hill. He sat and listened to the monks chant for a while, and recorded some of the music they made up there.

Afterward, someone mentioned there was a second monastery. Higher up. Secret. And the directions to it were the kind of vague that gets a tourist hopelessly lost on a mountain in the dark.

Rather than wander somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, Nicholas asked if someone could actually show him. One of the young teenage monks volunteered and led him up the hill to it.

This one was a platform with an outlook, the entrance guarded by a pair of carved stone lions. No monks living there yet. The interior was being rebuilt, so that part stayed off limits, which honestly only made it better.

The payoff was the viewpoint itself. Golden deer flanking a dharma wheel along the parapet, the young monk who’d brought him up there leaning on the wall beside them, and beyond all of it, nothing. The mist had rolled all the way in and swallowed the entire valley. You couldn’t see the mountains, you couldn’t see the village, you couldn’t see anything. Just two golden deer, a guide in maroon robes, and a wall of white.

So the main quest, the smudge in the fog he’d stared at from the village and refused to let go of, turned out to have a hidden second stage. A half-finished secret monastery on a mountaintop, reachable only if a teenager decides to take pity on you, with a viewpoint that showed you nothing at all. You don’t find that by resting when you’re sick. You find it by being too stubborn to.

A few more nights in Phakding. The plan: let Pokin and Po On finish recovering before we head down to Lukla, meet back up with Steve and Alice, and catch the helicopter out to Kathmandu.

DB picked us a place run by a friend of his, a Sherpa family who own the Gurkha Inn. Big vegetable garden, cozy courtyard, and a mom named Nima Sherpa who cooks every single thing herself. Nicholas declared it the best food of the entire trip, and he said it with the specific reverence of a man who’d been eating dal bhat at altitude for two weeks.

Specialty Dunked Salad

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We’ll start with the salad, because it was the most dramatic thing that happened to a vegetable all week.

The whole trip, everyone was careful about food. The rule on a trek like this is you don’t eat fresh washed vegetables raw, because the water they’re rinsed in can wreck you. And wrecking your stomach when half the group is already sick is not the move.

So Nima, rightfully proud of her garden, brought out a beautiful salad. Big fresh lettuce leaves. Still wet from washing.

Pokin, Nicholas, and Po On all made eye contact. The silent “uh oh.” You can’t refuse it, that’s rude, and she grew it herself. But eating it raw was a real gamble.

Pokin’s solution was quietly tactical: she ordered a pot of hot water for “tea.” Then, every time Nima turned her back, the three of them dunked their lettuce into the boiling water in their glasses, fished it out, and ate it as fast as possible. Praying it killed whatever needed killing.

Nobody got sick. The specialty dunked salad was a success, and I’m only telling you about it now because we’re safely off the mountain.

The Rest of the Food

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Here’s the thing about the upper mountain: there are basically no vegetables. Everything is hauled up by porter or yak, so the higher you go, the more your diet narrows to rice, potatoes, and whatever survives the trip. Coming back down to a place with an actual garden meant Nima was pulling things out of the ground and putting them on the table the same day.

Momos with vegetables, obviously. Pasta with veggies, potatoes done several ways, even homemade fries. The veg fried pasta was the clear winner. We ordered it enough times that Nima probably thought we couldn’t read the rest of the menu.

The fries were homemade from the garden potatoes. Po On declared them life-changing and proceeded to order them at every single meal for the rest of our stay. Between her fries and the veg fried pasta, Nima had two standing orders she could set her watch by.

Po On got a crepe. Nicholas had apples in his oatmeal, which is really just Chestnut’s order. Chestnut is a horse. Apples are basically his version of pillow chocolates, and he gets very invested in making sure they show up.

Kerman Makes a Namlo

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During the downtime, Kerman decided Nicholas needed proper initiation into being a real porter. You may remember Nicholas already borrowed a namlo on the way up to Thukla and carried his own bag for four hours, which apparently earned him an apprenticeship he didn’t ask for.

So Kerman found an old rice bag, cut it into strips, and then produced a sewing needle and thread out of thin air, the way porters seem to produce any tool they need from nowhere, and sewed Nicholas a real, custom namlo by hand.

Meanwhile, Nicholas handled the other half of porter life: laundry, by hand, strung up on a line with a whole valley behind him.

The Sixty-Pound Pine Branch Heist

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This one was ridiculous, and I mean that as the highest compliment a story can earn.

One morning we woke up and Kerman and Nilman were gone. Nima said they were “out doing work.” Fine. Porters often help around the farm on off days to earn their keep, so we figured they were doing chores somewhere.

They were gone a long time.

When they finally came back, they were each hauling a MASSIVE white sack. Easily sixty pounds. Bulging. We assumed they’d done a supply run, hauled up food and goods for the inn.

Then Nicholas looked inside.

Branches. Just… branches. What looked like plain old pine branches.

“Did you guys go out and pick pine branches?”

“Yes. Way up in the mountains.”

Turns out DB had called them and sent them on an epic hike straight uphill toward Kongde, a trail steep enough that parts of it need a chain and rope to get up and down. Six hours of climbing just to get to the top. They were gone all day. To pick branches.

For context, Kongde sits up around 4,000 meters on the ridge across the valley, well over a kilometer of vertical above Phakding. That’s not a stroll to the corner store. People take entire acclimatization days just to go up and look at it. The porters did the climb, harvested a small forest, and then came back down the same chains and ropes with sixty pounds strapped to their foreheads. On a day off.

And the branches weren’t pine. They were sage. Specifically the pure high-altitude mountain sage that the monks burn every morning for prayer, and that families burn too. Apparently this stuff is ceremonial grade, the “good stuff,” and it doesn’t grow down where you can just buy it cheap.

Later, while Nicholas was on the phone with DB sorting out logistics, he asked: “Did you make the guys bring back a hundred pounds of branches?”

“Haha, yes,” DB said. “I’ll bring it back to my family and friends to burn for the year. We can truck it back, otherwise it’s very expensive.”

So either DB is running a quiet artisanal sage-harvesting operation, or he just really likes good sage. I cannot tell which. Either way, two men hiked six hours up a chain-and-rope mountain trail to bring back a tree, and that is the most Himalayan thing I witnessed all week.

People have been asking about the astrophotography.

Fair enough. We’ve spent the last several posts talking about Nicholas destroying his body for these shots. Three consecutive nights at extreme altitude. Zero sleep. Getting sick. Sleeping on a literal mountain. All for photos that are still sitting on an SD card in a camera bag in a Himalayan lodge.

We don’t have a computer up here. The Z9 files are massive and there’s no way to properly edit them on a phone. But Nicholas pulled one frame off the camera, opened it on his phone, and did a quick color grade so you can at least see what all the suffering was about.

This is not the final edit. This is a phone preview of a raw file. It’s going to look a little blown out, a little rough around the edges. The real versions will come when we’re home with actual monitors and actual software.

But even rough, it’s something.

First, here’s what the location looks like during the day. This is the Sherpa Memorial at Chukpi Lhara, near Lobuche. Nicholas scouted it during the afternoon hike and immediately started planning the night shoot.

And here’s what it looks like at 3 AM.

The Milky Way. The Galactic Center. Arcing over the entire Himalayan skyline, with the snow on the peaks still faintly visible in the starlight. Thousands of stars, dust lanes, nebular structure. The valley below disappearing into darkness with a single point of light from Dingboche far below.

This is one frame from one night. There are three more nights of timelapses on that SD card.

The full edits are coming when we get home. For now, this preview will have to do.

Rest day in Phakding. Pokin and Po On are recovering. Nicholas is about 40% better but still coughing. Everyone’s supposed to be taking it easy.

So naturally, Nicholas went for a walk.

He came back an hour later and said, “Sumi, this village is a video game.”

He wasn’t wrong.

I’ve played a lot of games. Skyrim. The Witcher. Every open-world RPG where you wander into some village and every building looks like it was placed there by a level designer who wanted you to feel something. The stone walls. The handmade wooden fences. The mysterious hut on the cliff that’s definitely hiding a side quest.

Phakding is that village. Except nobody designed it. People just built it this way because that’s how you build things when you’re in a Himalayan river valley with no power tools and a lot of rocks.

The farm plots have handmade wooden ladders propped against stone walls. The fences are built from branches. Not treated lumber. Not hardware store posts. Actual branches lashed together. It looks exactly like what happens in a game when you visit a village in the first act before you have access to any real materials.

Then Nicholas found the crafting district.

People were hauling raw logs down from the forest, bringing them to this open-air camp under tarps, and hand-turning them into boards. With hatchets. No table saws. No planers. No power tools of any kind. Just hatchets, hands, and chisels. Then they were building a house with the boards they just made. From trees they just cut. The entire supply chain was visible in one frame.

And the quarry.

Someone was hauling boulders up from the riverbed, and another person with a sledgehammer was smashing them into building-sized stones. Then they’d stack those stones into walls by hand. An entire house, built from rocks you broke yourself from bigger rocks. If this were a game, this would be a crafting minigame that reviewers would call “surprisingly satisfying.”

Then Nicholas looked up and spotted these:

Giant wild beehives, clinging to a sheer cliff face. Unreachable without climbing gear or a very questionable decision. In every RPG I’ve ever played, there’s a moment where you see a collectible on a ledge and think, “I can definitely get up there.” This is that ledge. Except the collectible fights back.

And just when you think it can’t get more video game:

A carved mani stone in a misty forest clearing. Prayer flags draped from the trees. Tibetan script painted in white across the dark rock. If you stumbled onto this in Skyrim, you’d hear a choir start singing and a skill tree would light up. Here it just sits quietly in the fog, which honestly makes it more powerful.

A monastery. On a cliff. In the mist. With no discernible path to reach it. In a game, this would be the area you can see from the starting zone but can’t access until you’ve unlocked flying or completed a 40-hour questline. It just sits up there, reminding you that you’re not ready yet.

If you’ve seen a more video game village than Phakding, let me know. I’ve been to 30+ countries. I’ve been to actual medieval towns in Europe. None of them hit like this. This place has handmade ladders, cliff beehives, runestones in the fog, a lumber mill staffed entirely by people with hatchets, and a floating monastery.

Phakding isn’t a rest stop on the EBC trek. It’s a starting zone in the greatest RPG nobody’s made yet.

Someone should really get on that.

Nicholas spent the evening listening to Pokin cough.

Tengboche is at 3,860 meters (12,664 feet). Lower than where they’d been, and the heated room at The Himalayan was the best lodge on the trek. But the fluid in Pokin’s lungs wasn’t clearing. HAPE doesn’t get better at altitude. It gets better at lower altitude. And 3,860 meters is still very much altitude.

The next stop down would be Namche Bazaar at 3,440 meters (11,286 feet). Still high, and the hike to get there is a full day of steep, grueling trail. There was no way Pokin was doing that hike. Po On wasn’t in much better shape after her own respiratory infection.

So Nicholas called in air support.

A helicopter would fly into Tengboche in the morning, pick everyone up, and take them down to Phakding at 2,610 meters (8,563 feet). The very first town they’d stopped at on Day 1 of the trek, back when Nicholas and Pokin had arrived by helicopter with fevers and spent the night at the Sherpa Shangri-La wondering if the trek was over before it started. Full circle. Quiet, low, and warm. Perfect for recovery.

But as a treat, Nicholas booked the helicopter to do a flyover of Everest Base Camp and a landing at Gokyo Lake on the way down. If Pokin couldn’t make it to these places on foot, she’d see them from the air. Po On had wanted to see Gokyo Lake, the last part of the original Three Passes route that got scrapped. This way she’d at least get a look.

First, though: goodbyes.

The porters had headed out earlier that morning, carrying all the duffels down the trail by hand. Kerman and Nilman, doing what they do. Meanwhile, we took the lazy way.

The “helicopter pad” in Tengboche is a loose stone circle on a hill behind the village. No terminal. No windsock. Just some rocks arranged in a vaguely circular pattern and a pile of construction piping.

We piled in. Headsets on. Doors shut. And then we were up.

The pilot took us north, threading through the valleys toward Everest Base Camp. From the air, you can see the entire Khumbu Glacier, the tent clusters at Base Camp, and the peaks that Nicholas had been staring at from ground level for the past two weeks. It’s a completely different perspective. Everything that took days to hike past takes about four minutes in a helicopter.

On the way over, we spotted climbers on Lobuche Peak. Tiny figures in a line, working their way up a steep snow face.

Then we banked west toward Gokyo.

The helicopter landed right at the lake. We got out, stretched our legs on the rocky shoreline, and took in the view. The water was perfectly still. The mountains reflected in it like glass. Po On finally got her Gokyo Lake moment, even if she arrived by helicopter instead of over Cho La Pass.

Back in the helicopter. Headsets on. Time for the actual destination.

Here’s where it got interesting.

The pilot wasn’t told we were going to Phakding. He thought we were going to Lukla, which is the normal helicopter destination in the region. Lukla’s got the airport, the infrastructure, the helipads. Phakding is a tiny village with no obvious reason for a helicopter to go there.

So when we landed in Lukla, the ground crew looked at the passengers, looked at the paperwork, and said: “No, no. They’re supposed to go to Phakding.”

Pilot: oh.

Back in. Five more minutes of flying. Landed in Phakding.

But here’s the thing nobody mentioned: there are multiple helicopter pads in Phakding. DB had booked us a family-run inn right next to the pad near the Sherpa Shangri-La, the same area where Nicholas and Pokin had been dropped at the very beginning of the trek. That’s where the family was waiting for us.

The pilot dropped us at a completely different pad. Somewhere we had never seen before. In the middle of what appeared to be someone’s farm.

The helicopter took off. We stood there.

No obvious path out. No signs. Just us, some farm plots, and a lot of trees. We stood around looking confused until a very old woman wandered through the farm, sized us up, and wordlessly motioned for us to follow her. She led us through her property and out to the main trail.

We checked the map. We were about a mile from where we were supposed to be. Uphill and downhill. The family that runs the inn had been waiting at the other helicopter pad for two hours wondering where we were.

We messaged DB. He tried to reach the family. We started walking at whatever pace the girls could manage. After a while, a woman came running down the path toward us. “Are you from DB?” We said yes. She laughed. “My father has been waiting at the helicopter pad! He’s been there for two hours!” She led us back up to the lodge.

The inn is basic. Family-run, small, homemade food. But it’s warm, it’s low, and the family is genuinely kind. We settled in and decided to just stay for a few days and see how everyone feels.

Tengboche to Gokyo Lake to Everest Base Camp flyover to Lukla to the wrong helicopter pad in Phakding to an old woman’s farm to a mile-long walk to a family inn.

Not exactly how anyone planned it. But we’re at 2,610 meters, the three of us are settled in, and the coughing might actually stop now. Steve, Alice, and DB are still up in the mountains doing the Three Passes. We’ll see them on the other side.

Rest time. For real this time.

Nicholas came straight off the mountain to breakfast. No shower. No change of clothes. Sleeping bag rolled up, camera packed, ready to go. The plan was always to head down today — back to Tengboche, back to Pokin, back to lower altitude where humans can breathe without having to think about it.

But there was a problem he didn’t know about yet, because he’d been sleeping on a mountain.

Po On was not doing well. She’d been struggling for a couple days, but overnight it got worse. Not just the altitude anymore. She was getting genuinely sick on top of the altitude sickness. DB took one look at her that morning and made the call: she was not going over any more passes. She was done. She’d be heading down to Tengboche with Nicholas and me.

The question was whether she could actually hike it.

She didn’t think so. So what did we do?

We rented a horse.

Chestnut is probably back in Las Vegas right now beaming. “I’m so proud! Horses are so helpful! One of my fellow equines out there helping Po On in her time of need!” He’d be insufferably optimistic about the whole thing. He always is.

The horse’s name was Sunny. Or Suni. Or Soy. Or Soya. Honestly, every time the guide said it, it came out slightly different. We asked him to write it down. What he wrote had no obvious relationship to anything he’d been saying out loud. So the horse’s name remains a mystery. I’m going with Sunny because it makes the most sense.

But first — a look at what Nicholas was leaving behind.

This was the room at the lodge in Thukla. Shared squat toilet. Blue water barrel. The works. Given the state of things in there, Nicholas was actually glad he’d spent the night outside on a mountain instead. Better stars. Better air. Fewer things you don’t want to think about.

Meanwhile, back in Tengboche:

Yeah. Two very different mornings.

So the new plan: instead of going straight to Tengboche, they’d swing back through Dingboche on the way down. Nicholas had already visited the doctor there twice with Pokin, so why not make it three for three? Same clinic, same doctor, new sister.

Po On rode. Nicholas walked behind with the porters. Down through the valley, past the settlements, retracing all the steps he’d been speed-running upward just a few days ago. The whole thing was a lot more pleasant going downhill, aside from the part where everyone was sick or becoming sick.

They made it to the doctor in Dingboche. Nicholas walked in and said, “Hey, I’m back. With the other sister.”

Po On’s diagnosis was similar to Pokin’s. Respiratory infection, probably from the altitude and cold. Same antibiotics. The good news: no HAPE. No fluid in the lungs. Less severe than Pokin’s situation. The bad news: she still needed to go down. No more high altitude for her.

So they kept going. Down from Dingboche, through the valley, up the final climb to Tengboche.

That last stretch into Tengboche is deceptive. You’re descending for most of the day, everything feels like it’s winding down, and then the trail goes straight up. Steep switchbacks through the forest, right when your legs have already decided they’re done.

Pokin spotted them coming up the trail from her patio. Reunion at the lodge. Everyone alive, mostly functional, varying degrees of sick.

So here we are. Back at The Himalayan in Tengboche. Pokin has her heated room. Po On has antibiotics. Nicholas has a cough that’s getting worse and a body that’s finally catching up with three nights of no sleep at extreme altitude.

But the three of them are back together. Steve, Alice, and DB are still up there doing the Three Passes route, but this crew is reunited. That counts for something.

Rest time.

Three for three. That was the goal. The Sherpa Memorial timelapse had worked. The Kala Patthar Milky Way over Everest had worked. One more clear night, one more shot, and Nicholas would have pulled off the entire astrophotography redemption arc.

The problem was that Nicholas had absolutely destroyed himself getting here. Back-to-back all-nighters, the EBC speed run, the Kala Patthar climb, and then four hours of porter duty with a namlo. He knew the overexertion at this altitude was probably going to get him sick. But tomorrow they were descending to Tengboche to meet Pokin, dropping to lower elevation, warm hotel, rest and recovery. If he was going to blow himself out, tonight was the night to do it.

The Scout

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As soon as he’d dropped off the porter bags, Nicholas went scouting. He’d noticed a hill right outside the hotel in Thukla, maybe two minutes away, that looked promising. Good framing on Ama Dablam, nice open sky.

It didn’t work. There was a light right where you didn’t want it, and it looked like it might be on someone’s property. Scrapped.

So he walked further, heading back along the route toward Dingboche, looking for higher ground. He found a hill about 30 to 40 minutes down the trail with a big rock at the top and the exact view he wanted.

The catch: getting there meant crossing a gorge. Thukla sits on the other side of a river, and they’re in the middle of building a suspension bridge over the ravine. The steel cables are strung across, but the bridge itself doesn’t exist yet. So for now, you have to hike all the way down from Thukla to the river, cross a tiny bridge at the bottom, and climb all the way back up the other side.

Forty minutes each way. With 25 pounds of camera gear. At night. After everything he’d already put himself through.

He skipped dinner. Went to bed. Set the alarm for 11 PM.

The Last Push

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When the alarm went off, Nicholas was extremely tempted to go back to sleep. He’d earned it. Every muscle in his body had earned it.

He looked out the window. Perfect conditions. Fresh coat of snow. Clear sky.

Up we got.

Down the ravine. Across the river. Up the other side. Found the hill. Climbed to the top. Forty minutes with the full kit. By now, the routine was dialed in. Emergency poncho blankets laid down as a ground layer. Sleeping bag on top. Camera on the tripod. Battery wrapped to keep it warm. Shot framed. Timelapse started. Six hours this time, running all the way through to dawn.

Then we crawled into the sleeping bag, tucked under the big rock to block the wind, and slept.

Actually slept. On a mountain. In the Himalayas. Under the stars. At altitude. While the camera clicked away every twenty seconds, frame after frame of the Milky Way rotating over the peaks.

About every hour, Nicholas would wake up, peek at the camera preview, confirm it was still working, and go back to sleep. Every time: stars. Working. Good. Sleep.

It was the longest, cleanest timelapse of the entire trip. The best weather. The best conditions. Six uninterrupted hours of clear sky.

Dawn

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Around 6 AM, with the sky brightening and breakfast at 6:30, Nicholas stopped the timelapse and packed everything up. Forty minutes back to Thukla. Down the hill, across the river, up the ravine. Back to the lodge just in time.

Three nights. Three successful shoots. The Astrosaster was fully redeemed.

Nicholas definitely knew he’d blown himself out. The overexertion, the altitude, the lack of sleep. It was going to catch up with him. But they were heading down today, back to Tengboche, back to Pokin, back to oxygen and warm rooms.

It was worth it. We got the shots.

You’d think after summiting Kala Patthar at 1 AM, shooting the Milky Way over Everest, trail running back down at dawn, and getting maybe two hours of sleep total, Nicholas would take the easy hike to Thukla and, I don’t know, rest.

You’d be wrong.

See, with only two porters left for the four of us, the bags were overloaded. We hadn’t packed light. Five large duffels, two porters. Our guys, Kerman and Naben, are absolute machines. Either of them can carry three bags, probably four, without breaking a sweat. It wasn’t a problem.

But a few days earlier, Nicholas had tried on Kerman’s namlo, and it planted an idea.

What’s a Namlo?

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A namlo is the traditional Nepali porter carrying system. It’s a woven strap that loops around your forehead, with the load hanging on your back. No shoulder straps. No hip belt. No frame. Just a strap across your forehead and the full weight of whatever you’re carrying pulling on your neck. The porters use these to haul 30, 40, sometimes 60+ kilos through the Himalayas. It looks like it shouldn’t work, but the biomechanics are actually clever. The head strap channels the weight axially down the spine, the strongest load-bearing column in the body. You lean forward to keep the center of gravity over your feet, and the weight distributes straight down through your skeleton instead of pulling backward on your shoulders like a backpack does. In some ways it’s more efficient, especially on steep terrain. It just requires neck muscles that most people haven’t developed since infancy.

Nicholas tried Kerman’s a few days ago and thought: “That’s not so bad.”

Famous last words.

The Pitch

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“Hey DB, can you have the porters make me a namlo? I want to carry my own bag to Thukla.”

DB, who by this point had learned to take Nicholas seriously no matter how insane the request, still said no. “No, no, no, bad idea.”

Nicholas insisted. “Let me try. If it doesn’t work, they take my bag back. No problem.”

DB relented. The porters fashioned a namlo, found the lightest duffel (still sizable), and strapped it on.

The Hike

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Nicholas took off ahead with the porters while the rest of the group stayed back with DB for the normal pace. The porters powered along, taking breaks, trading snacks, and generally having a good time. Nicholas kept up.

The namlo wasn’t terrible. Definitely awkward on the neck, using muscles that don’t normally get invited to the party. The balance was tricky. And you couldn’t look up at anyone on the trail. You just had to keep your head down and march. But the weight was manageable, and the four hours to Thukla went by.

The best part was the double-takes. Every guide and porter on the trail did the same thing: glance at Nicholas, look away, then snap back and stare. All the porters here are clean-shaven local men. Nicholas is a white guy with two weeks of trail scruff on his face, hauling a duffel on a namlo like he belongs. He did not belong. Everyone knew it. But he was doing it, so they just stared.

At one point, the other two porters went on ahead after lunch and Nicholas was on his own. He pulled up to one of the porter rest stops, a place where they set down their loads on stone ledges. It was snowing. One other porter was resting there.

Nicholas dropped his bag like he’d done it a thousand times, then coughed a few times, clearing his lungs from the cold air. The other porter looked at him. Did a double-take. Then reached into his bag, pulled out a half-finished Coke, and offered it to Nicholas.

Apparently, it’s pretty easy to get adopted into the porter community. Just show up with a namlo and trail scruff.

They made it to Thukla by the afternoon. Surprisingly, Nicholas’s neck was totally fine. The namlo did its job. What got him were the shoulder straps, which left bruises where the bag shifted against them. But he’d carried his own bag the whole way, and somewhere on that trail, for a few hours at least, he wasn’t a tourist. He was just another guy hauling gear through the mountains.

12:30 AM. The alarm went off. Nicholas had skipped dinner again, gone straight to bed after speed-running the entire length of Everest Base Camp, and managed maybe three hours of sleep. At 5,164 meters (16,942 feet). In a tea house where the walls are plywood and the wind finds every gap.

He looked outside. Clear sky. Stars. No clouds.

Time to climb the highest point of the entire trek. In the dark. At 1 AM. Because apparently this is just what we do now.

The Upgrade

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Nicholas had been refining his warmth strategy across three consecutive nights of freezing his extremities off at extreme altitude. Night one at the stupa: nothing but layers. Night two at the Sherpa Memorial: Pokin’s emergency poncho blankets. Tonight, he leveled up again. He packed his actual sleeping bag.

The plan was to set up the camera at the summit of Kala Patthar, start the timelapse, and then crawl into the sleeping bag and wait. Revolutionary stuff. Someone should have thought of this sooner.

He also knew he didn’t have the energy to haul 25 pounds of camera gear straight uphill for two hours at this altitude. That’s where Kerman came in. The man had volunteered the night before, and at 1 AM he showed up ready to go, camera bag on his back, looking annoyingly fresh.

The Wrong Way (Again)

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Kerman set off confidently into the dark. Nicholas followed. They started up a hill. Twenty-five minutes in, Kerman stopped.

“Uh-oh. Wrong way.”

Of course.

They turned around, hiked back to the lodge, and started over. It was now 1:45 AM. The Milky Way was rising, and they were forty-five minutes behind schedule because apparently nobody can find a trail in the Khumbu Valley after dark.

The Climb

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Nicholas was not going to miss the shot. Not this time. He’d read online that a fit hiker could summit Kala Patthar from Gorak Shep in about two hours if they weren’t suffering from AMS. The elevation gain is about 464 meters (1,524 feet) over roughly 2 kilometers of steep, rocky trail. At 5,000+ meters, where every breath gives you about half the oxygen your body expects.

With Kerman carrying the camera bag and Nicholas carrying nothing but trekking poles and stubbornness, they powered up.

One hour and twenty minutes. Summit. 5,644 meters (18,519 feet).

For context, a normal trekker takes two to three hours. A fit one does it in an hour and a half to two. Nicholas did it in one twenty, at 1 AM, in the dark, after days of altitude exposure and back-to-back all-nighters. Those weighted stairmaster sessions back in Vegas apparently paid off.

The Shot

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He set up the camera just in time. The Milky Way was there, arcing over the Himalayas. And from up here, unlike everywhere else on the trek, you could actually see Everest. The whole peak, not just the tip peeking out from behind its neighbors. Everest, Nuptse, Lhotse, the Khumbu Glacier, and the frozen lake of Gorak Shep far below, all laid out under a sky full of stars.

He started the timelapse. Click. Preview. Stars over Everest. Working. Click. Preview. Still working.

Then he unpacked the sleeping bag, laid it out on the rocks, and got in.

I want to pause here and note that Nicholas was sleeping in a sleeping bag on the summit of Kala Patthar at 18,519 feet, watching the Milky Way rotate over Mount Everest while his camera captured it frame by frame. There are worse ways to spend a night.

Kerman the Legend

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Now here’s the thing. Nicholas had told Kerman and DB that he only needed help carrying the gear up. Once the camera was set up, Kerman could go back down to the lodge, sleep, and Nicholas would descend with the sunrise group later.

Kerman said “Okay.”

Then he went and hid behind a rock.

He didn’t go back down. He didn’t tell Nicholas. He just found a rock, sat behind it, and stayed. No sleeping bag. No warm gear. Just his jacket and whatever internal furnace powers that man. At 5,644 meters. For hours.

Nicholas woke up around 4:45 AM to the faint light of sunrise creeping over the peaks, and heard Kerman talking to himself, trying to stay warm.

“What are you doing up here?!”

Kerman shrugged. “You take photos for a very long time.”

Nicholas gave him his electric hand warmers. Poor Kerman. But what an absolute beast.

Sunrise

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Another hiker we’d met at the tea house the night before, Sven, made it up for sunrise too. We took some photos of each other, and then Nicholas had one more idea.

The Trail Run

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No camera bag. Kerman had it. The sun was coming up. The trail was visible for the first time in hours. And Nicholas thought to himself: “I bet I won’t ever have another opportunity to trail run down a mountain at 5,644 meters.”

So he did. He trail ran the entire descent of Kala Patthar in the early morning light.

When he got back to Gorak Shep around 6 AM and told me what he’d done, I had some things to say. I was there for all of it, tucked in his backpack the whole climb, but hearing him recap it out loud really drove home how unhinged the last few days had been.

“You absolute maniac. You power-hiked to the summit of Kala Patthar at 1 AM, shot the Milky Way over Everest, napped in a sleeping bag at 18,500 feet, and then trail ran down? After the Sherpa Memorial shoot the night before? After speed-running the entire length of Everest Base Camp? After not sleeping for essentially three days?

At the summit, the effective oxygen is about 10.5%. That’s roughly half of sea level. Between Everest Base Camp and Kilimanjaro’s summit. Every breath gives you about half the oxygen your body expects. Your muscles were running on nothing. Any normal person’s body would have shut down somewhere around hour two of night one.

I’m not mad. I’m impressed. And slightly concerned about your judgment. But mostly impressed.”

The timelapse photos are still on the camera, unprocessed. But from what we saw on the previews, the Milky Way over Everest shot from that night is probably the best photo Nicholas has ever taken. It’s getting framed on our wall the moment we get home and have a chance to process it.

What’s Next

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Back at Gorak Shep, it was already time to wake up because it was 6 AM. Po On had been told she couldn’t climb Kala Patthar due to AMS symptoms. Steve had bailed from exhaustion. Alice was the only other one who made the sunrise climb, heading up with DB around 3:30 AM.

Nicholas had two options: gun it all the way back to Pokin in one day, which was a stretch, or join the group heading to Thukla, the settlement he’d passed on the way up that had a perfect view for one more night of astrophotography.

Thukla was only about three hours away. A rest day, basically. Everyone else was totally gassed. Po On couldn’t go higher. Steve was running on empty. Alice had just done the sunrise climb. The whole group was happy to agree that Thukla was the move. Have some breakfast, easy hike down.

But of course this is the EBC speed run. You know Nicholas isn’t going to make it that easy on himself.

One hour of sleep. That’s what Nicholas got between returning from the Sherpa Memorial astrophotography session and the alarm going off again. One hour. And now we were hiking to Everest Base Camp.

The plan: Lobuche to Gorak Shep, have lunch, then the final push along the ridge to EBC. Take photos at the rock. Hang around for ten minutes. Turn around. Sleep at Gorak Shep. Simple enough if you ignore the part where we were doing it at 5,300 meters (17,400 feet) on a combined sleep total that wouldn’t fill a nap.

But first, a bit of backstory.

The Tea Invitation

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Back in Namche, we’d run into another group at the hotel. One of them was a guy named Kia who, at some point in the conversation, casually mentioned he was in “god-tier shape.” Now, I respect that energy. I consider myself a god-tier bear, so I appreciate when someone commits to the bit. Turns out Kia actually backed it up. He was heading to Everest Base Camp to summit Everest. For the third time.

Why would anyone climb Everest three times? I don’t know. Nicholas wanted to find out.

Kia invited us to visit their camp when we got up to EBC. “Come find us, have some tea, hang out.” Their tent was the very last one, the biggest camp, at the far end of Base Camp. Sounded great. We thought nothing of it at the time.

Lobuche to Gorak Shep

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The hike from Lobuche to Gorak Shep was where the oxygen started to thin out in earnest. Walking felt like wading through something. Every step required a little more effort than it should, like someone had turned up the gravity a few percent. Nicholas thought it was manageable. Po On was starting to struggle. The altitude was creeping up on her: tiredness, dizziness, slowing down. AMS doesn’t announce itself politely.

The Approach

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Past Gorak Shep, the trail turns into something else entirely. The ground is glacier moraine: loose rock, grey dust, and ice. Yak caravans haul supplies through like it’s a highway, except the highway is made of rubble and sits at the altitude of a small airplane.

The Rock

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And then we were there. Everest Base Camp. The rock. The one you see in every photo from every trekker who’s ever made it this far. We climbed on it.

The Tents

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Here’s one thing they don’t tell you about Everest Base Camp: despite being called the Everest trek, you don’t really see Everest. It’s tucked behind other mountains the entire time, just the tip peeking out occasionally like it’s shy. You’d think the mountain named in the trip title would show up more. Kala Patthar, a nearby peak at 5,545 meters (18,192 feet), is where you go if you actually want a view. But that’s tomorrow’s problem.

Po On looked at the tents stretching into the distance and asked DB if she could quickly run to the far end to find Kia’s camp. DB laughed. Not a polite laugh. The kind of laugh that means “absolutely not.” He explained that getting to the other side of EBC wasn’t a quick walk. It’s over a mile of navigating ice ridges, moraines, and crevasses. It would take ages. And Po On looked like she was about to pass out from the altitude, so she gave up.

Nicholas, on the other hand, did not give up.

The Speed Run

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“Can I go find Kia’s tent?” Nicholas asked DB.

DB looked at him. “Yeah, sure. Meet you back at Gorak Shep.”

So while Po On and the group turned around to head back, Nicholas and I started blitzing through Everest Base Camp. And here’s the thing about Base Camp that you don’t appreciate until you’re in it: the place is enormous. It stretches over a mile across the Khumbu Glacier, a sprawling city of expedition tents, supply depots, and ice ridges. Getting from one end to the other isn’t a stroll. It’s a full hike across unstable moraine and glacier, at 5,300 meters, and it took Nicholas about 45 minutes of speed-hiking to cross. Kia said his tent was the very last one at the far end. Fine.

Nicholas finally reached the far end and started asking around. “Hey, do you know Kia?” Everyone said “Kia who?” Not helpful. So he started doing what Nicholas does: pulling out the camera and interviewing random climbers. “Hey, what are you doing here? Oh, climbing Everest? Can I ask you some questions?”

Mid-interview, someone popped their head out of a tent. “Are you looking for Kia?”

“Yeah! Where is he?”

“The tent at the very end. The one with the giant pirate flag.”

A pirate flag. Of course. A man who climbs Everest three times, calls himself god-tier, and flies a pirate flag over his tent. That’s either someone you want to know very badly or someone you want to avoid entirely. No middle ground.

Unfortunately, Kia had just left for a hike and wouldn’t be back for hours. Nicholas was disappointed. I was devastated. A kindred spirit. Someone who clearly operates on the same level of ambition and self-regard as me, and we missed him by minutes.

With daylight running out and no headlamp (because of course he forgot it), Nicholas turned around and speed-ran the entire length of Base Camp back to the ridge, then down to Gorak Shep.

What’s Next

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Nicholas got back to Gorak Shep and looked at the schedule. The group was set to wake up at 3:30 AM to climb Kala Patthar for sunrise photos. Kala Patthar is 5,545 meters (18,192 feet), the highest point on the entire trek, and one of the only spots where you can actually see Everest properly.

And Nicholas’s brain, running on trail dust and whatever neurochemical is responsible for bad decisions at altitude, thought: “What if I went up Kala Patthar tonight? For astrophotography? Milky Way over Everest?”

The hike from Gorak Shep to the summit of Kala Patthar is a three-hour slog straight uphill. At night. In the cold. At extreme altitude.

Nicholas found DB. “Hey, are any of your porters crazy enough to carry my camera gear up Kala Patthar at midnight if I tip them well?”

DB thought he was joking.

He was not joking.

DB asked the group. Kerman, the absolute goat, said “Sure, I’ll do it.”

Departure time: midnight. That left a few hours for another nap.

Let’s see how this one plays out. It can’t possibly work.