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There are no photos in this post. It was pitch black, well below freezing, and Nicholas wasn’t about to pull out his phone to stage a portrait of me next to a cairn at midnight. So you’re getting words. Deal with it.

The alarm went off at 11:30 PM. Nicholas had slept maybe four hours after skipping dinner and collapsing into bed the moment we reached Lobuche. He looked outside. Clear sky. Stars everywhere. No moon.

He considered, very briefly, going back to sleep. Then he remembered 500 black frames.

So we got up. Packed the camera, the tripod, lenses, batteries, and me into the big backpack. Strapped on the headlamp. Stepped outside into dead silence. Lobuche at midnight is the kind of quiet where you can hear your own heartbeat, which at this altitude is doing more work than it probably should be.

The plan was simple: hike back down the trail we’d come up that afternoon, find the Sherpa Memorial, set up the camera, and shoot a timelapse of the Milky Way rising over the valley. About 45 minutes each way. Easy.

The Wrong Turn

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Here’s the thing about hiking in total darkness at 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) with no moon: you can’t see anything. The headlamp throws a little pool of light a few meters ahead, and beyond that it’s just black. There was fresh snow on the ground covering most of the trail markers. Nicholas was moving fast, head down, watching his footing, crossing little frozen streams, crunching through frost.

At some point the trail split. He didn’t see it.

He kept walking confidently in what he was sure was the right direction. Crossed a few more streams. Scrambled over some rocks. The terrain felt a little different than he remembered, but it was dark, and everything looks different in the dark.

Then he looked up.

A dome. A white geodesic dome sitting in a rocky basin, surrounded by tents. Like something out of a Mars colony.

Lobuche Base Camp. The mountaineering staging area we’d looked down on from the ridge that afternoon. He’d walked right past the split and descended into the valley below.

The Video Game Solution

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Nicholas pulled out his phone. No signal, no internet, but the offline map showed his location and a marker for the Sherpa Memorial. The memorial was up on the ridge above him. The trail back to where he’d missed the split was somewhere behind him in the dark, distance unknown.

He had two options. Option one: retrace his steps, find the split, take the correct trail. Sensible. Safe. Slow.

Option two: ignore the trail entirely, point himself directly at the memorial marker, and just climb straight up the hill.

If you’ve ever played a video game and thought “I bet I can skip this entire section by just climbing the wall,” that’s exactly what Nicholas did. No trail. No switchbacks. Just straight up a steep, dark hillside at nearly 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) with 25 pounds of camera gear and a bear on his back, hoping there wasn’t a cliff face in the way. At that altitude, walking on flat ground makes you winded. He charged up this hill without stopping. I have no idea how his lungs were doing this on four hours of sleep in the last two days. Any normal person’s body would have quit halfway up.

There wasn’t a cliff. We hit the ridge, and there it was. The Sherpa Memorial, right where it was supposed to be. The whole detour took about the same time as the actual trail would have. Thirty-five minutes, give or take.

The Shot

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This time Nicholas knew what he was doing. After the Astrosaster, he’d dug through every menu on the camera and found a setting buried three levels deep that previews each frame after it’s taken. No more blind shooting for four hours and hoping. Every twenty seconds, the screen would flash the latest frame. If something went wrong, he’d see it immediately.

He set up the tripod, framed the valley looking south with the mountains on either side, and started the timelapse. Click. Preview. Stars. Click. Preview. Stars. Working.

For the next three or four hours, we sat against a rock wrapped in an emergency blanket, trying to stay warm. It was still freezing. Nicholas couldn’t feel his toes or his fingers. But there was almost no wind this time, which made it considerably less miserable than pacing circles around the stupa the night before. The emergency blanket wasn’t big enough to lie down in, so we wrapped ourselves up, curled into a ball, and tried to sleep sitting on our knees. Neither of us succeeded.

The weather held. The camera kept clicking. Every preview showed stars.

The Results

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I saw the previews on the camera screen, and yes, they look pretty great. But that’s all I can tell you right now. Nicholas has no computer and no Wi-Fi out here. The photos are trapped on the camera’s memory card, unprocessed, unedited, unseen at full resolution. We’ll post them after we get home.

For now, just trust me. The bear saw them. The bear approves.

We packed up at dawn, hiked back to Lobuche the normal way this time, and got in just in time for maybe an hour of sleep before the alarm went off again. Next stop: Everest Base Camp. No time to even download the photos to see how good they really were.

The speed run doesn’t stop.

While Pokin headed down to Tengboche, we headed up. Nicholas, Po On, Kerman, and me. Destination: Lobuche, about 4,940 meters (16,207 feet). Higher than anything we’d done so far, and Nicholas was doing it on zero sleep.

The plan, if you could call it that, was insane. Today: Dingboche to Lobuche. Tomorrow: all the way up to Everest Base Camp and back to Gorak Shep. That night or the next: Kala Patthar. Then sprint back down to Tengboche to meet Pokin. Three days to do what most people take a week to do, with astrophotography attempts every clear night. The original three high passes they came here for? Scrapped entirely.

Nicholas wasn’t in much of a mood. He’d just watched Pokin walk the other direction with fluid in her lungs. He hadn’t decided if he’d made the right call. He was running on nothing, emotionally and physically, and the camera stayed mostly in his pocket. The photos in this post are sparse because the day felt sparse.

The hike from Dingboche climbs steadily through increasingly barren terrain. The last scraps of alpine shrub give way to rock and dust. Trees are a distant memory. Even the yaks start looking like they’d rather be somewhere else.

Thukla

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Partway through the day, the trail drops into the small settlement of Thukla, a cluster of tea houses wedged into the valley before the steep push up Thukla Pass. A place to eat, warm up, and stare at the hill you’re about to climb.

The Sherpa Memorial

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At the top of Thukla Pass sits one of the most sobering places on the entire trek. The Sherpa Memorial at Chukpi Lhara is a collection of stone monuments, chortens, and plaques dedicated to the Sherpas and climbers who have died on Everest and the surrounding peaks. Prayer flags stretch between the cairns, and white khata scarves drape over the stones.

It’s quiet up there. Not the kind of quiet where nobody’s talking. The kind where nobody needs to.

But Nicholas noticed something else up here. Looking back down the valley from the memorial, the view was wide open to the south. Mountains framed perfectly on both sides, the valley stretching out below. Exactly the kind of composition that would look spectacular with the Milky Way arching over it.

He filed that away. The memorial was about 45 minutes from Lobuche. Not close, but not impossible for a middle-of-the-night astrophotography run.

The Ridge to Lobuche

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Past the memorial, the trail follows a high ridge before dropping steeply into a valley. And that’s where things got interesting. Down below, tucked into a rocky basin at the base of Lobuche East, sat the Lobuche Base Camp. Not the village of Lobuche where we’d be sleeping, but the actual mountaineering base camp where climbers stage their attempts on the peak.

We made it to Lobuche by early afternoon. Higher than we’d ever been, thinner air than we’d ever breathed, and Nicholas still hadn’t slept.

But he wasn’t done thinking about the Sherpa Memorial. That valley view, wide open to the south, mountains framed on both sides. If the weather cooperated tonight, he could hike back out there and try for the astrophotography shot. Redemption for the Astrosaster. Forty-five minutes each way, in the dark, at nearly 5,000 meters, on zero sleep.

He skipped dinner, went straight to bed, and set his alarm for 11:30 PM. Just to check the sky.

Nicholas didn’t sleep. By the time he got back from the stupa, explained the disaster to Pokin, and started packing away his gear, the alarm was already going off. Six AM. Zero hours of sleep.

The decision everyone had been putting off couldn’t wait anymore. Pokin’s lungs weren’t getting better. They were never going to get better up here. The doctor had said it plainly: go down. So they sat in the lodge that morning, running on no sleep and dread, and figured out a plan.

Here’s what they came up with: Pokin would descend to Tengboche with Nilman, one of our porters. Tengboche was lower, had the heated room at The Himalayan where she’d stayed before, and she could actually rest and recover there.

Po On going up to Lobuche to rejoin the group was risky. She wasn’t doing well with altitude either, and higher wasn’t the direction you want to send someone who’s struggling. But Nicholas could take her up with Kerman, one of our other porters, reconnect her with Steve, Alice, and the rest of the crew, then push on.

Pokin was the one pushing him to keep going. She didn’t want Nicholas to cancel everything on her account. If he could still get his photos, still see EBC, still salvage something from the trip, he should. The astrophotography window was the clincher. The next two or three nights were the last chance before moonlight ruined the sky. After last night’s disaster, Nicholas had nothing to show for months of planning. If he went down with Pokin now, it was over. No EBC, no astro, no nothing. If he went up, he could speedrun the whole thing: Lobuche today, EBC tomorrow, Kala Patthar, then sprint back down to Tengboche.

Pokin would be on her own for three nights. She’d have Nilman, she’d be descending, and she’d be resting in a proper room. It wasn’t ideal. But it was the plan that gave everyone the best shot.

Saying Goodbye

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We stood outside the lodge and said our goodbyes. Po On was coming with Nicholas and me up toward Lobuche. Pokin was heading the other way, back down through everything we’d already climbed.

And then they split. Nicholas, Po On, and I headed uphill. Pokin and Nilman turned around and started walking back.

The Descent

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The rest of this post is Pokin’s. She took photos the whole way down, and what follows is her solo trek from Dingboche back to Tengboche. About 10 kilometers (6 miles) and 400 meters (1,300 feet) down, then 200 meters (650 feet) back up at the end to reach Tengboche. With bronchitis. And fluid in her lungs. Coughing the entire way.

Pokin set the pace. One step at a time, stopping to catch her breath every few minutes. Every cough rattled something that shouldn’t be rattling. Nilman followed behind, matching her speed.

The trail dropped down through the high valley, past the same stone-walled fields and kharka huts they’d walked through days earlier going the other direction. The difference was she was alone now. Just her, Nilman, and whatever wildlife was judging her from behind the rocks.

Nilman kept letting Pokin lead, which sounds polite until you realize Pokin has no sense of direction. She kept taking wrong turns onto steep scrambles they had no business being on, and Nilman just followed with the bags without saying a word. No doubling back either. The slopes were too steep to turn around and climb back up, so they just committed and scrambled down whatever Pokin had gotten them into.

Every time Pokin asked if Nilman wanted a break, he said no. So they powered through the entire hike without stopping. No rest, no tea house detours, just walking.

As she descended, the landscape started to change. More green. More air. The dry, brown scrub of Dingboche slowly gave way to actual vegetation.

The last stretch from Deboche to Tengboche is all uphill. Nilman said twenty minutes. Pokin was out of steam. Whatever energy she’d been running on had run out somewhere on the valley floor, and the final climb turned into something closer to a crawl. Twenty minutes became an hour. She described it as moving like a caterpillar, which is generous to caterpillars.

But she made it. Tengboche by late afternoon, back to The Himalayan, back to a heated room. Lower altitude. Actual oxygen in the air. She could rest.

Meanwhile, Nicholas, Po On, and I were heading the other direction, straight up into thinner air. That’s the next post.

Nicholas had been planning this shot for months. Long before we left Vegas, before the trek even started, he’d mapped out a narrow window where everything would align: a new moon (so no moonlight washing out the sky), clear weather at extreme altitude (rare), and the Milky Way rising behind the Himalayan peaks at just the right angle to fill the frame. That alignment only happens for a few nights each year from this location. We were here for it.

The trip was falling apart around us. Pokin’s lungs were getting worse. The group had split up. Nicholas hadn’t decided yet whether he was going with Pokin to lower altitude or pushing on alone. But this shot was the one thing that could still go right.

We’d already been up to the stupa the previous night, when fog killed the shot after a single frame. But that attempt wasn’t wasted. We knew exactly where to go, exactly where to set up, exactly how to frame it. Tonight would be faster.

It had snowed during the afternoon, which sounds bad but is actually good. Snowfall pulls moisture out of the atmosphere, and once the system passes, what’s left is dry, stable air. The kind that lets starlight through clean.

Around midnight, Nicholas set his alarm and looked out the window.

Clear sky. Stars everywhere.

The Climb

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We packed the camera gear, bundled up in every layer we had, and hiked up to the stupa in the dark. Twenty minutes through two inches of fresh snow. Probably around -12°C (10°F) before wind chill, closer to -20°C (-4°F) with it. At 4,410 meters (14,469 feet), the air is already thin enough to make you dizzy. Add subzero temperatures and high-altitude gusts and you’ve got yourself a party.

Nicholas set up the camera on the tripod, framed the composition exactly how he wanted it: stupa in the foreground, Ama Dablam rising behind, Milky Way cutting diagonally across the sky. He took a test shot. Beautiful. Sharp stars, clean foreground, perfect exposure. He ran a test timelapse for a few frames to make sure the interval was working. Checked them. Everything looked great.

He set it to 500 frames. About four hours of shooting. Clicked go.

The Wait

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For the next four hours, Nicholas and I paced circles around the stupa, hiding behind it when the wind got bad. He did squats. Push-ups. Jumping jacks. Marched in circles. Anything to keep blood flowing. He had thermal long johns, hiking pants, an Arcteryx shell, three shirt layers, a fleece, a down jacket, an outer shell, leather glove liners, down mittens, and hand warmers. Still freezing.

I sat on the backpack and provided moral support, which is arguably the most important job.

The Milky Way was right there. He could see it with his own eyes, a faint misty band cutting across the sky above the mountains. It was rising up behind Ama Dablam exactly as planned, rotating slowly through the frame over the course of the night. Every time he glanced at the camera, it was clicking away. Click. Twenty seconds of silence. Click. Over and over.

This was the shot. The once-in-a-lifetime alignment he’d planned for. Clear skies, no moon, the galaxy arcing over the Himalayas. He was watching it happen in real time.

Around 4:30 AM, the camera stopped. 500 frames captured. Four and a half hours in the cold. Nicholas walked over with frozen fingers and pressed playback.

Frame 1. Black.

Frame 2. Black.

He scrolled. Frame 50. Black. Frame 100. Black. Frame 250. Black. Frame 500. Black.

All of them. Every single one. Five hundred photographs of absolute nothing.

What Happened

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The lens has an electronic connection to the camera body. In extreme cold, that connection can drop. When it does, the lens forgets its settings and defaults to a tiny opening that lets in almost no light. The test shots were fine because the connection was still holding. Somewhere in the first few frames of the real timelapse, it failed. Every frame after that was so underexposed that they’re pure black. Not dark. Not fixable. Black.

The worst part: the camera screen goes dark during timelapse shooting. That’s normal. Nicholas was watching the camera the entire time, but there was nothing on the screen to tell him something was wrong. It was supposed to look like that. He had no way of knowing unless he pressed a specific button to preview a frame mid-shoot.

He didn’t know that button existed.

One press would have caught the failure on frame one. He could have fixed it and still had three and a half hours of shooting left. But he didn’t know. So he stood in the cold for four hours, watching the most beautiful sky of his life, while the camera recorded nothing.

After

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Nicholas didn’t say much on the walk back down. I didn’t either.

He got back to the lodge at 5:30 AM. Wake-up call was at 6:00 AM. Zero sleep. Zero usable frames. And now, on no sleep and completely gutted, he had to face everything else: Pokin probably couldn’t make it to Everest Base Camp. His own trip was likely getting cut short. He had to choose between going down with Pokin or sending her alone with a porter who didn’t speak English. The new moon window had maybe three more nights before moonlight would ruin the sky, and he’d probably just blown his only real chance at the shot he’d been planning for months.

He watched the Milky Way rise over the Himalayas with his own eyes. It was perfect. And the camera got none of it.

The group split up this morning. Steve, Alice, and DB headed out early for Chukhung, continuing the Three Passes route as planned. Nicholas, Pokin, Po On, and I stayed behind in Dingboche. Pokin’s doctor had asked to see her again today, so we weren’t going anywhere.

The Room

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Since we’d be here another night, here’s what home looked like.

A private bathroom at this altitude is a luxury. It’s not heated, the water isn’t hot, and there’s a bucket and scoop for when the plumbing has opinions, but it’s yours and you don’t have to walk down a frozen hallway at 3 AM. Worth every rupee.

Wandering Dingboche

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With Pokin resting, Nicholas and Po On went out to explore and do a short training hike, roughly as far as Pokin and Po On had gone the day before. I went along, obviously.

And then we found another one. This one was a different color, a tan that reminded me of someone back home. A certain lucky horse from Hong Kong who would absolutely not shut up about how GREAT the altitude feels.

Naturally, I had to ride it.

Cafe 4410

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We ended up spending a good chunk of the afternoon at Cafe 4410, a place owned by a friend of DB’s. It’s named after Dingboche’s altitude in meters, and it’s surprisingly nice inside. American-styled, fairy lights, actual ambiance. Not what you’d expect between a yak field and a medical clinic.

Nicholas and Po On parked there with ginger lemon honey tea while laundry got sorted out. A rest day that actually involved resting. Novel concept.

And then Po On did something wonderful. She got me hot cocoa.

Not just any hot cocoa. This thing came in a mason jar with marshmallows, whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and a wafer stick. At 4,410 meters (14,469 feet), in a village accessible only by foot or helicopter. I don’t know how. I don’t care how. It existed and it was mine.

Back to the Doctor

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The nice thing about the Mountain Medical Institute in Dingboche is the pricing model. One consultation fee covers your exam, all medications, and any follow-up visits for the same condition. You can keep going back.

For foreigners, it’s $75. For locals, $1.

The follow-up wasn’t encouraging. The doctor said Pokin’s condition was stable but not improving. The ten medications he’d prescribed were holding things in place, but the fluid in her lungs wasn’t going away. High altitude pulmonary edema doesn’t get better at altitude. It gets better at lower altitude. He recommended she go down.

Going higher was off the table. Staying put was buying time at best.

The Decision

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So now we had a problem. Pokin needed to descend. The obvious destination was Tengboche, back to that heated room at The Himalayan where they’d stayed a few days earlier. It wasn’t too far, it was significantly lower, and she could rest properly.

But who goes with her?

If Nicholas went with Pokin immediately, Po On would have to continue alone with just a non-English-speaking porter. She wasn’t sick, but altitude was hitting her hard, and sending her up to higher elevation by herself wasn’t great.

If Nicholas took Po On up to Lobuche first to reconnect with the rest of the group, Pokin would have to descend to Tengboche on her own. Easier terrain, but still a full day’s hike at altitude with bronchitis and fluid in her lungs.

Neither option was good. They’d figure it out in the morning.

Tonight, though, Nicholas had other plans. The stupa was still up there. The sky might cooperate. And this time, he wasn’t going to let a little fog stop him.

Rest day in Dingboche. And by “rest day” I mean “hike straight up a mountain to 5,000 meters (16,404 feet) for fun.”

The logic goes like this: you spend a day at altitude doing a big climb, come back down, sleep at the lower elevation, and your body adjusts faster. Climb high, sleep low. It’s the golden rule of acclimatization and also a convenient excuse for Nicholas to drag me up another hill.

The hill in question sits right behind Dingboche. A ridge covered in prayer flags leading straight up to about 5,000 meters. No switchbacks, no false summits to give you hope. Just up.

But first, breakfast.

The porters carry an entire box of pomegranates and apples up the trail so we can have fresh fruit with breakfast each morning. Think about that for a second. Someone is hauling produce through the Himalayas so a bear and his friends can eat pomegranate seeds at 14,000 feet (4,267 meters). I’m not complaining.

Two Hikes, Two Speeds

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Pokin wanted to do the acclimatization hike. Everyone, including Pokin, knew she probably shouldn’t. She’d been fighting a cough since Namche, and the last post ended with her barely making it into Dingboche. But she’s stubborn, and honestly, I respect it.

The compromise: Pokin and Po On would do the first quarter of the hill, then peel off on a side quest to a small monastery with Kerman, one of our porters. Short, manageable, still counts as climbing high.

The rest of us — Nicholas, Steve, Alice, Manoj, DB, and obviously me — were going for the top.

The grind was exactly what it looked like from below: steep, rocky, and relentless. No shade, no teahouses, no cinnamon rolls. Just cairns marking the path and prayer flags getting closer very slowly.

Nicholas’s weighted stairmaster sessions — 117 floors with dumbbells back in Henderson — were paying off. He and Steve were ahead of the pack the whole way. At this altitude, every step costs twice as much oxygen as it should, and those months of training were the difference between grinding and suffering.

The view from the top was absurd. Ama Dablam right there, Imja valley stretching out below, snow peaks in every direction. I could see why people do this acclimatization hike even when their lungs are screaming at them to stop.

Pokin’s Side Quest

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Meanwhile, Pokin and Po On had done their portion of the climb and taken a detour to a small monastery tucked into the hillside. Kerman went with them as escort.

The monastery was old, built directly into the rock face with thick stone walls and faded blue window frames. The kind of place that’s been sitting on a mountainside for a few hundred years and has zero interest in your opinion about it.

Back in Town

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Back at the lodge, it was clear Pokin had overdone it. Even the short version of the hike had been too much. Her cough was worse, and she looked like she might have a fever again. Nicholas took her to the clinic.

The Mountain Medical Institute in Dingboche is a proper clinic — actual exam room, actual doctor. Dr. Abhyu listened to her lungs, checked her vitals, and delivered the news: impending high altitude pulmonary edema and bronchitis. She shouldn’t go any higher. She could stay put and see if it improved, but it probably wouldn’t.

This was the moment the trip changed.

The group had planned to leave for Chukhung the next morning. Pokin couldn’t do that. So the decision was made: Steve, Alice, and DB would continue to Chukhung as planned. Nicholas, Pokin, and Po On would stay behind in Dingboche, give Pokin another day, and figure out the next move.

It was the right call, but it was a hard one. This trek was supposed to be the whole group, together, the entire way. Now it was splitting apart.

The Night

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Nicholas had been scouting a spot for astrophotography since we arrived — a stupa on a hill about 20 minutes above Dingboche, with a clear view of Ama Dablam to the southeast. The previous nights had been fog, fog, and more fog. But tonight, he set an alarm for midnight and looked out the window.

Stars.

We packed the camera gear, hiked up in the dark, and set up on a ledge near the stupa. The sky was perfectly clear. Milky Way visible. Ama Dablam silhouetted against a wall of stars. Nicholas spent about 20 minutes dialing in settings and then started the intervalometer.

The first frame looked phenomenal.

The second frame, 20 seconds later, was half covered in fog.

The third frame was gone. Total whiteout. Fog rolled up the valley with heavy winds, and the sky just vanished. We sat up there until 2 AM hoping it would clear. It didn’t.

Back to the lodge. Back to bed. Zero usable frames. Another night of Himalayan fog winning the battle.

But here’s the thing: Pokin’s diagnosis meant we’d be staying an extra day in Dingboche while Steve, Alice, and DB went ahead. Which meant one more night. The stupa was still there. The composition was still perfect. We’d get another shot.

The mountains weren’t done with us yet.

We woke up in Tengboche to the kind of morning that makes you briefly forget you’ve been coughing for three days. Blue skies, mountains everywhere, and a lodge lobby that had no business being this nice at 3,875 meters (12,713 feet).

Today’s plan was simple: descend from Tengboche to Deboche, then climb up to Dingboche. About 11 kilometers (7 miles). Not the worst day on paper, but the altitude was now firmly above 4,000 meters (13,000 feet), which is where things start getting real.

The trail dropped into a mossy, shaded forest that looked like it belonged in a fantasy game. Twisted roots, mud, dappled light through ancient branches. And then, right on cue, we arrived at a place that leaned into that exact vibe.

Deboche sits in a hidden valley below Tengboche, and someone decided to name their lodge after Tolkien’s hidden Elvish sanctuary. Honestly? Fair. The valley does have that tucked-away, last-homely-house energy. No elves, though. Just a lot of laundry drying in the sun.

This was where the rest of our group had slept the night before, while Nicholas and Pokin stayed up in Tengboche for the heated room and the (failed) astro attempt. We were here to regroup and keep moving.

The trail between Deboche and Dingboche is where the landscape starts to change. Trees thin out, the valley widens, and you start seeing more of the big peaks without having to crane your neck around a ridge.

It’s also where the woolly yaks show up.

I’d seen yaks before on this trek, but these were different. Full winter coat, long shaggy fur hanging almost to the ground, the kind that look like they were designed for a blizzard and accidentally wandered into spring. The ones lower on the trail were more like yak-lite. These were the premium edition.

The trail kept climbing, and Ama Dablam kept showing off. At this point she was practically following us.

The up-and-down nature of this trail is something nobody warns you about. You’d think “hike to a higher village” means you just go up. No. You go down 300 meters (984 feet) into a river valley, cross a bridge, then climb 500 meters (1,640 feet) back up the other side. Repeat. The Himalayas don’t believe in flat.

We stopped for tea at the Everest Bakery, because of course there’s a bakery in the middle of nowhere at 4,000 meters.

Past the bakery, the terrain opened up into high alpine valley. Stone walls, carved mani stones, and the mountains just sitting right there with nothing between you and them.

The weather started turning around midday. Clouds rolling in from the valley below, temperatures dropping, the peaks disappearing one by one. By the time we hit the final approach to Dingboche, it was full overcast and Pokin was running out of steam.

She’d been pushing through since Tengboche, but the altitude was winning. The last stretch into Dingboche is a gradual uphill across an exposed plateau, and when you’re not feeling great, gradual is just a polite word for relentless.

Dingboche is the last major stop before things get properly extreme. The air is noticeably thinner. Walking up a flight of stairs to your room leaves you breathing like you just sprinted. Nicholas seems to be back to normal, but Pokin was heading in the wrong direction.

Dinner, though? Dinner was good.

Tomorrow is the 5,000-meter (16,404 feet) acclimatization hike. Can’t wait to see how that plays out.

The plan was to hike from Namche to Deboche today. That didn’t happen. But what did happen was arguably better, at least for a bear who appreciates heated rooms at 3,875 meters (12,713 feet).

Nicholas was feeling noticeably better. The antibiotics from the hospital were kicking in, and for the first time in a couple days he wasn’t hacking up a lung every ten minutes. Pokin, on the other hand, was not improving. But the trail doesn’t wait, so off we went.

The hike from Namche to Tengboche is about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles). Not the longest day, but it’s mostly uphill and the altitude is starting to make itself known. Every incline feels a little heavier. Every rest stop feels a little more earned.

You round a corner, more mountains. You go up a hill, more mountains. You stop to catch your breath, mountains. It’s relentless.

The trail between Namche and Tengboche follows the Dudh Kosi valley and then climbs steeply through rhododendron forest. By now we’d gotten used to sharing the path with yak caravans and porters, but the traffic felt heavier on this stretch. More lodges ahead means more supplies going up.

And there she is. Ama Dablam. The mountain that looks like someone designed it specifically to be on postcards. At 6,812 meters (22,349 feet), it’s not the tallest peak around, but it might be the most dramatic. That sharp, angular summit with the hanging glacier on its face. It kept popping up at every turn for the rest of the trek, like a mountain that knows it’s photogenic.

We stopped at a teahouse along the way for a break. High Mountain Bakery, apparently. They had a big prayer wheel out front, and obviously I had to give it a spin.

More suspension bridges. This one framed Ama Dablam perfectly between the valley walls, which feels intentional but probably isn’t.

We made it to Tengboche by the afternoon. The monastery is the main attraction here, the largest in the Khumbu region. The entrance has the classic dharma wheel flanked by two golden deer, prayer wheels lining the walls, and stupas scattered around the grounds. The whole crew went inside to walk around. It had a prayer room and various halls with murals and statues. Pretty cool, even for a bear who typically prefers gaming rooms to prayer rooms.

Now, the original plan was to continue another 20 minutes downhill to Deboche, where the rest of the group would be staying. But Nicholas had two things on his mind.

First: the new moon was approaching. He’d been planning astrophotography shots for this stretch of the trek, and Tengboche sits on an open plateau with minimal light pollution. Perfect for shooting. Deboche, on the other hand, sits lower in a forested valley. Not ideal for sky views.

Second, and more importantly: Pokin wasn’t doing well. She’d been pushing through, but she looked rough. Nicholas noticed a brand new lodge right next to the monastery, The Himalayan, which had literally opened its new wing two days prior. He and DB walked over to check it out.

The room was heated.

At 3,875 meters (12,713 feet) in the Himalayas, heated rooms are about as common as bears with blogs. Power up here is scarce and expensive. Most teahouses are stone cold, sometimes literally. You sleep in your sleeping bag inside a sleeping bag liner inside all your clothes. So a heated room? That’s not just luxury. That’s Nicholas knowing his wife needed to rest properly.

He booked it. Everyone else hiked down to Deboche. Nicholas and Pokin stayed in Tengboche.

The room was genuinely nice. By any standard, not just by Himalayan teahouse standards. Loft bed, sitting area, wood paneling, actual curtains. For Nepal at nearly 4,000 meters (13,000 feet), this was absurd. Nicholas was paying American hotel prices for it, but one look at Pokin curling up in a warm room instead of shivering in a sleeping bag, and it was obviously the right call.

That night, Nicholas had his first shot at astrophotography. New moon. Dark skies. Ama Dablam as a backdrop.

The entire valley filled with fog.

Not a single star. He couldn’t even see the monastery from the room. Four thousand meters (13,000 feet) up, perfect astronomical conditions on paper, and the mountain had other plans. A preview of what was to come for the next several nights.

But the morning made up for it.

The fog was gone. The sky was impossibly blue. Ama Dablam, Thamserku, all of them just sitting there in the early morning light like they’d been waiting all night to show off.

Worth the detour. Worth the heated room. Worth every rupee.

Onwards and upwards. Literally.

This was acclimatization day. Two nights in Namche, one day to let your body catch up with the altitude. The plan was to use it for a day trip to the Everest View Hotel: terrace at 3,880 meters (12,730 ft), expensive tea, views of Everest. Pokin had been excited about it since Kathmandu.

The problem was that Nicholas sounded worse, and now Pokin had developed a cough too.

Nicholas said the Everest View Hotel wasn’t a good idea. Nicholas is usually right about these things, even when you don’t want him to be. Missing a day trip is annoying. Missing the Three Passes trek because you pushed too hard on a rest day is a different kind of regret. Pokin knew this. She didn’t like it, but she knew it.

So instead we hiked to the Sagarmatha National Park Museum, a shorter climb to about 3,550 meters (11,650 ft). There’s a statue of Tenzing Norgay up there, and supposedly a view of the big peaks.

Pokin hiked so slowly up the hill that she lost sight of the group entirely. This is a recurring theme. She leaves early to compensate, everyone passes her anyway, and then she yells at Nicholas for walking too fast. The circle of trekking life.

The Museum

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We walked to the viewpoint, and for the first time on this trek, the clouds cooperated.

The Giants

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Every day since Kathmandu, the big peaks had been hiding. Overcast, fog, clouds thick enough to walk on. We’d been told the mountains were there. We believed them in theory. But until this moment, the highest thing we’d actually seen was the ceiling of a teahouse.

There it was. Everest, dead center, with Lhotse beside it and clouds rolling around their bases like they were being dramatic on purpose.

We’d been to the Alps. We’d been to Patagonia. Those are big mountains. This was different. The Khumbu Himalaya has the greatest vertical relief of any continental interior on Earth: roughly 7,000 meters (23,000 ft) of elevation change over just 20 to 30 kilometers. You’re standing at 3,500 meters (11,500 ft) looking up at 8,849 (29,032 ft). Your brain doesn’t have a reference frame for it. You look up and something feels wrong, like the scale has been edited.

Tenzing

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Tenzing Norgay was born probably in 1914, possibly right here in the Khumbu. He worked his way up from porter across six Everest expeditions before the one that mattered. On May 29, 1953, he and Edmund Hillary became the first confirmed people to stand on top of the world. Neither one ever said who stepped up first. They agreed it didn’t matter.

Time named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. His statue stands here, above the town where he may have been born, looking toward the mountain he climbed when everyone said it couldn’t be done. Not a bad spot for a statue.

The Hospital

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After the museum, Pokin still wanted to push on to the Everest View Hotel. Nicholas said no. Rather than argue about it on a mountainside, we decided to do something useful instead: go to the hospital.

All three porters were dispatched to escort us there, which felt excessive until we realized they weren’t really asking.

The Um Hong Gil Namche Community Hospital sits above the main town, funded by the foundation of Um Hong Gil, a Korean mountaineer and first Korean to summit all fourteen eight-thousanders. He built this hospital in 2017 to serve both the local Sherpa community and the trekkers who show up at altitude and discover their lungs have opinions.

Dr. Binod Kr Sah confirmed what we suspected: early-stage respiratory infections, both of them. The prescription was rest and a frankly impressive quantity of drugs.

The porters sat outside the entire time. We tried to tell them to go. They wouldn’t budge. We asked the hospital assistant to tell them it was OK to leave. She said they’d get in trouble if they did.

Total bill: $103. Exam, diagnosis, every medication, credit card fee. For two people. At a hospital built by a Korean mountaineer in the Himalayas.

We walked back down with bags full of pills and instructions to rest. Take it easy day it is.

Pokin never got to the Everest View Hotel. But she got her first look at Everest from the museum viewpoint, and she got antibiotics that would keep her on the trail for the Three Passes. Sometimes the boring decision is the right one.

Not that she’ll admit that.

We arrived in Namche in fog so thick we could barely see the building across the street. The town could have been three houses or three hundred. We had no idea.

Then morning happened.

The clouds from yesterday were gone. Just gone. And behind them was this absurd amphitheater of a town carved into a mountainside, with the Kongde Ri range towering behind it like a backdrop someone forgot to make realistic.

Nicholas was supposed to be resting. He was up before the sun with his video camera instead, working on some film project. Which woke up Pokin. Who then grabbed the camera and went out to take photos.

I stayed in bed. Like a responsible bear.

That’s the thing about Namche. It’s simultaneously an ancient Sherpa trading post and a town where you can get espresso and a haircut. Prayer wheels next to Columbia Sportswear ads. Mani stones next to signs for helicopter evacuations.

Namche sits at 3,440 meters (11,290 ft) where the Dudh Koshi and Bhote Koshi rivers meet. Centuries before trekking poles existed, this was a stop on the salt trade route between Nepal and Tibet. Traders crossed the Nangpa La hauling salt and wool one way, rice and tea the other. Namche was the marketplace in the middle. These days the trade is mostly North Face jackets and overpriced dal bhat, but the bones of the place are the same.

From up high you can see why the traders picked this spot. Natural shelter from three sides, a view of anyone coming from any valley, and a flat area in the middle for a market. The Saturday market still runs here, same spot, same idea. Less yak butter, more chocolate bars and SIM cards.

By the time we got back, the sun had crept down to the rooftops and the town was waking up. Other trekkers emerging, blinking, doing the same thing we’d done an hour earlier: looking up and realizing they were surrounded by mountains they couldn’t see yesterday.

Not a bad morning. Not bad at all.