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.
Last group photo before the split. Everyone’s smiling like this is fine and normal and not the moment the trip changes.The lodge dining room had a gold mandala ceiling. At 4,410 meters. Someone made choices and I respect them.
Since we’d be here another night, here’s what home looked like.
Pokin. Beat and discouraged. She knows what the doctor is going to say.
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.
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.
Dingboche from above. ‘Hotel Good Luck’ painted on the roof. They’re going to need it at this altitude.Found some horses wandering around the stupa. Just doing their thing.
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.
Sumi Bear, mounted cavalry. Nicholas is helping me up. As he should.Yaks doing absolutely nothing. Living the dream.Not all yaks get the day off. These ones are plowing a field by hand. Or by horn, I guess.The Snow Lion Lodge and French Bakery. Because what Dingboche really needed at 14,000 feet was croissants.
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.
Hot cocoa at 4,410 meters. Marshmallows. Whipped cream. Chocolate shavings. A wafer stick. Po On, you are a legend.
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.
Cafe 4410. Warm drinks, good vibes, a ‘Good Morning’ sign on the wall. Almost forgot we were in the Himalayas.Momos. Two plates. Two styles. Pokin’s favorite, and honestly, they’re growing on me too.
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.
Nicholas pointing out the pricing. $75 vs $1. The universal healthcare gap, printed on a piece of paper at 14,000 feet.
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.
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.
Fresh fruit at 4,410 meters. Pomegranate and apple, sliced and skewered. Manoj cuts this for us every single morning.Pokin’s usual. Two eggs, one toast, zero altitude awareness.
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.
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.
Ama Dablam from Dingboche. She really does just sit there and look like that all day.
The rest of us — Nicholas, Steve, Alice, Manoj, DB, and obviously me — were going for the top.
Steve gave me bunny ears. I will remember this.My official summit portrait. Ama Dablam in soft focus behind me because the mountain knows its role.
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.
The last push. Everyone on this slope is questioning their life choices except the cairns.
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.
Me and my bud near the top. The clouds were rolling in, which only made it more dramatic.The view from the top. Ama Dablam, prayer flags, and a bear. Not a bad office for the day.
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.
The summit crew. 3A Adventure banner, prayer flags, and everyone pretending they aren’t completely gassed.
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.
Pokin and Po On at their turnaround point. The prayer flags are optimistic. The clouds behind them, less so.Resting with a view. Dingboche looking tiny from up here.
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.
‘Welcome to Dingboche Resort.’ The sign’s doing a lot of heavy lifting with the word ‘resort.’Looking down the Imja valley. That braided riverbed carries glacial melt from some of the highest mountains on Earth. It doesn’t look like much from up here, but it’s the reason any of these villages exist.
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.
Second doctor visit of the trek. This one had a Medicine Buddha on the wall, which felt appropriate.
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.
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.
Me and the Z9, ready for business. Red light so we don’t ruin our night vision. I look appropriately dramatic.
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.
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).
Stone pillars, paper lanterns, actual sofas. This is a lodge at 12,713 feet. I expected plywood and regret.The patio. That’s Tengboche Monastery on the right and a casual wall of the Himalayas in the background.
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.
Heading out. The rhododendrons were still going strong at this altitude.
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.
Rivendell Lodge, Deboche. Yes, that Rivendell.
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.
Mani stone in the morning light. Prayer stones are everywhere on this trail, and I’m still passing them on the left like a good bear.
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.
My bud, fully committed to yak photography. That khata scarf on his backpack really ties the whole look together.This is a real yak. Not the smooth, short-haired ones from lower down. Full woolly coat, massive horns, absolutely zero interest in me.
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.
Me, two yaks, and the Himalayas. This is my LinkedIn photo now.Another bridge. Prayer flags doing their thing.
The trail kept climbing, and Ama Dablam kept showing off. At this point she was practically following us.
Still smiling. Give it an hour.Group shot with Manoj, our guide.
Some sections of the trail are surprisingly well-built. Flat stones, railings, the works. Other sections are just loose gravel over a cliff. It’s a mixed bag.
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.
The Everest Bakery. Cinnamon rolls, carrot cake, and specialty coffee. At 13,000 feet. In a building heated by a single yak-dung stove.Nicholas’s pack. Getting more decorated by the day.
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.
Mani wall leading straight toward the big peaks. Feels like walking into a painting that someone forgot to finish.Ama Dablam from the trail. That glacier hanging on the face looks like it’s about three seconds from falling off.
A porter carrying actual lumber up the mountain. Wooden planks. On his back. I complain about being carried in a backpack pocket.
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.
Weather check: gone. Nicholas broke out the big red jacket. I broke out my concerned expression.
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.
First sight of Dingboche. 4,410 meters (14,469 feet). Those grey clouds aren’t leaving.We made it. Dingboche.Dingboche. Population: varies by season. Bakery count: at least one (French, apparently). Stupa count: several.
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.
Momos. Pokin’s favorite. Ten little dumplings and some questionable ketchup.
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).
One last look at Namche before heading out.
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.
Po On, Pokin, and Nicholas. Sun protection level: witness protection.
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.
Me at the Tenzing Norgay Memorial Stone. Paying my respects to a legend. He’d have appreciated a bear companion on that summit.
You round a corner, more mountains. You go up a hill, more mountains. You stop to catch your breath, mountains. It’s relentless.
Po On, Pokin, and Nicholas. Still going uphill. The last hour of this hike is basically vertical.The usual commute. Everyone on this trail has somewhere to be.
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.
First proper sighting of Ama Dablam from a teahouse terrace. Not too shabby.
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.
The three of us with Ama Dablam doing its thing in the background.
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.
Rest stop with a view. And a prayer wheel. And overpriced tea.Spinning for good karma. I need all the help I can get.Pokin, Nicholas, and our guide DB, with Manoj lurking in the background as usual.The whole crew, porters included.Our two porters, carrying our actual bags. Everything we brought for three weeks is on their backs right now.Pokin and Po On at another suspension bridge. These things are everywhere.
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.
Sagarmatha National Park. Tengboche: 3,875 meters (12,713 feet). EBC: 24 km (15 miles). We’re getting there.
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.
Po On, Alice, Steve, and Manoj at the lodge. Po On took the horizontal approach to resting.This is a lodge room at 3,875 meters (12,713 feet). Heated. Wood paneling. Loft bed. Nepal is full of surprises.I immediately claimed the sofa. Naturally.
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.
Morning in Tengboche. Warm bed. Good blankets. A bear could get used to this.Tengboche Monastery in the morning light, with Ama Dablam watching over everything.Thamserku, 6,608 meters (21,680 feet), looking entirely too dramatic in the morning sun.
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.
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.
Trail traffic. Dzos have the right of way. Always.The hiking duo, fully protected from sun, wind, and any possibility of being recognized.
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.
Namche from above. Somewhere down there is a hot shower we already miss.This pony outside our hotel was dressed better than any of us.
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.
The whole crew. And behind them, casually, Mount Everest.
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.
Nicholas and me with the view. He’s supposed to be resting. He is not resting.
Me and Tenzing. Both legends. Only one of us is bronze.
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.
Heading back down. Namche waiting below with its opinions about how much dal bhat should cost.
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.
The hospital. Korean-funded, Nepali-staffed, treating American tourists who didn’t listen to the altitude.
Nicholas being examined. He’s pretending this is no big deal. His lungs disagree.
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 haul. ‘Once a day after dinner.’ ‘Thirty minutes before breakfast.’ They left with a pharmacy in a bag.
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.
Dr. Binod giving the thumbs up. Cleared to keep trekking. Take the meds, take it easy, you’ll be fine.
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.
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.
Oh. So that’s Namche.
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.
First light hitting the peaks. The town’s still in shadow. It’ll get there.
Morning routine. Incense, stone, moss. Been happening here for a few hundred years.Porters hauling gas canisters up stairs at dawn, past a Baskin Robbins sign. The Himalayas in one photo.
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.
Alpenglow on Kongde Ri. The café below it won’t open for another two hours.
Rhododendrons in bloom. Nepal’s national flower, doing its thing at 11,290 feet.The full amphitheater. Every building is a lodge or a shop or both. The peaks behind them don’t care.
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.
Nicholas and me at the mani wall. He’s wearing the face buff for the air quality, not because he’s trying to look cool. Though he does look a little cool.
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.
The trail dropped down toward the Dudh Koshi river and followed it through a narrow gorge. The gentle, flower-lined paths from the morning were gone. This was raw terrain: boulders, loose dirt, the river roaring a few meters below, and a trail carved into the side of a cliff.
Single file along the gorge. The river doesn’t care about your schedule.
Parts of the trail had been washed out by landslides. We passed through active construction zones where workers were rebuilding the path by hand, hauling in cement by porter and laying new stone steps into the hillside. No machinery. No trucks. Just people with rocks and determination.
Trail maintenance. Every step on this path was placed by someone’s hands.Pokin crossing a log bridge. Manoj right behind her, keeping things bistari.
The Hillary Suspension Bridge sits about 125 meters (410 feet) above the Dudh Koshi river. Named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who funded infrastructure projects across the Khumbu after his 1953 Everest summit, the bridge is a long, swaying span of steel cable and wire mesh over a gorge that you really don’t want to look down into.
So naturally I looked down.
125 meters above the river. I’m fine. This is fine.Nicholas at the bridge entrance. The prayer flag draped over his pack makes him look like a budget superhero.On the bridge. The higher one is visible in the background. Yes, there are two.
The bridge sways. Not dramatically, not dangerously, but enough that your brain reminds you where you are. The metal grate floor lets you see straight through to the river below. Porters with enormous loads cross it like they’re walking to the kitchen. Yaks cross it. It’s fine. It’s all fine.
After the bridge, the trail does something cruel: it goes straight up. And it doesn’t stop going up for roughly 600 meters of elevation gain over the next two to three hours.
This is the section every EBC trekker warns you about. The relentless staircase to Namche Bazaar. Stone steps carved into the mountainside, switchbacking through pine and rhododendron forest, with the gorge dropping away behind you and the fog rolling in from above.
Both bridges visible behind us. The higher one is the one we’re about to cross. The lower one is for people who want a slightly less terrifying experience.Smiling through it. The stairs behind Manoj tell the real story.
The fog came in hard during the climb. The valley below disappeared. The mountains above disappeared. It was just stairs, breathing, and the sound of trekking poles hitting stone.
Somewhere under all that fog is the river we crossed an hour ago. Probably.Yak barriers. Because apparently yaks need to be told where they can and can’t go. They do not read signs.Rest stop in the pines. Everyone’s still smiling. Give it another 200 meters of elevation.
Nicholas was supposed to be taking it easy. He was not taking it easy. He has one speed, and it isn’t bistari. Pokin, who had been ahead of us since morning, was now somewhere behind, and every time she caught sight of Nicholas she’d yell at him to slow down. He would slow down for approximately thirty seconds before his legs forgot the instruction.
The gate to Namche Bazaar. We made it. Everything hurts.The whole crew at the Namche gate. The fog behind us is hiding seven hours of trail we never want to see again.Through the gate. Into the fog. Somewhere in there is a hot shower.
Namche Bazaar sits at 3,438 meters in a natural amphitheater carved into the mountainside. It’s the last real town before the high altitude stops, and it has things that suddenly feel like luxuries: restaurants, shops, Wi-Fi that occasionally works, and hot showers. The group was very excited about the hot showers.
We’d been hiking for about seven hours. Nicholas and Pokin had done it while recovering from fevers. Everyone else had done it while carrying the knowledge that this was only day two.
The hotel was nice. The showers were hot. The beds were horizontal. After the day we’d had, that was enough.
The drink stop at the cafe was exactly what we needed. Sit down, breathe, pretend the last few hours of stairs didn’t happen.
The crew at the drink stop. I got the best seat. As usual.
The espresso signs on the wall were aspirational at best, but it was a place to sit and that was enough.
Once everyone regrouped, the pace picked up. The problem was that Nicholas doesn’t really have a slow setting. He was supposed to be taking it easy. He was sick. Pokin knew this. So for the rest of the day, every time Nicholas passed her on the trail, she’d yell “bistari! bistari!” at him, which is Nepali for “slowly, slowly.”
It did not work. He kept going fast. She kept yelling. This became the soundtrack of the day.
NAMCHE. With an arrow. In case you forgot where you were going while climbing the 400th staircase.
The trail between the lodge and the national park entrance is more of the same: stone stairs, steep inclines, and occasional painted boulders reminding you that Namche is still ahead. Not behind you. Ahead. Uphill.
Trail markers come in many forms. This one was a trash can. Very practical.Mani stone photo op. There’s a sign behind us for the Utche Choling Monastery, which was apparently a five-minute walk away. We did not take the five-minute walk. We had enough walking.
Sagarmatha National Park. The world’s highest national park. And now, the world’s highest park with a bear in it.
Sagarmatha National Park was established in 1976 and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. It covers 1,148 square kilometers and ranges from 2,845 meters at Jorsalle, where we were standing, all the way up to 8,849 meters at the summit of Everest. That’s a park that starts at “uncomfortable” and ends at “death zone.”
“Sagarmatha” is the Nepali name for Everest. It means “forehead of the sky.” Which is more poetic than “really tall mountain that people keep trying to climb,” but means the same thing.
Manoj had gone ahead and handled all the permits before we arrived. He’d taken our passports earlier that morning and sorted everything at the checkpoint. So our grand entrance into a UNESCO World Heritage Site was just… walking through a gate. Nobody checked anything. Nobody stopped us.
The full squad at the gate. D.B. already in celebration mode. The rest of us still processing the stairs.Officially inside the park. Behind us, the ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ boulder. Ahead of us, several more hours of complaining.
Past the gate, the trail continued through Jorsalle with more mani walls, prayer wheels, and painted murals than we’d seen all morning. The whole area felt more deliberately sacred, like someone had decided that the entrance to a national park containing Everest should look the part.
Three Buddhas and six prayer wheels. The art up here puts most museums to shame.D.B. Double thumbs up. Apparently the horse behind him is the same one a friend of ours rented when he couldn’t make it to base camp on a previous trek. Small world up here.
Jorsalle Guest House. Where ‘Welcome’ is one word and two words at the same time.
We stopped at the Jorsalle Guest House for lunch. The kind of place where the Snickers bars in the display case cost more than the dal bhat, and the dal bhat is what you should be ordering anyway.
Nicholas at the lunch table. Tired but alive. Same.
Pokin ordered momos. She’s been ordering momos at every stop since Kathmandu. Steamed dumplings stuffed with vegetables or meat, served with a spicy sauce. She’s already scouting ahead for places that might have boiled ones, because apparently the momo quest has levels.
Nicholas got dal bhat. Rice, lentil soup, vegetable curry, greens. The standard trekker fuel that you’ll eat approximately 47 more times before this trip is over. It was filling. It was warm. It was exactly what you need when you’re sick and have been climbing stairs for five hours.
Pokin with her momos. Nicholas with his dal bhat. Both doing significantly better than yesterday.Namaste from the whole crew. Prayer flags on the ceiling. Momos in our stomachs. Namche still ahead.
Lunch was good. The group was together. The fevers were holding off. And the hardest part of the day was still waiting for us somewhere up the mountain.
7 AM in Phakding. Today’s mission: hike to Namche Bazaar. Seven hours of uphill. While sick.
Contemplating the hike ahead. Or possibly going back to sleep.
Nicholas and Pokin woke up feeling better. Not good. But better. The fevers had retreated enough that the plan still held: get to Namche, don’t die, use the two built-in rest days there to actually recover.
The lodge put out a breakfast spread that had no business being this good at 2,610 meters in a village accessible only by foot.
Eggs, potatoes, apples, cheese. In the Himalayas. We were pretty nervous about the food up here, but this seemed safe enough.Nicholas putting on the brave face. The hoodie was already up. Not a great sign for 7 AM.
We’d been warned not to eat meat in the Sagarmatha region. No refrigeration up here. Everything gets hauled in by yak, and cold chain logistics aren’t really a thing when your supply chain has hooves. Everyone acknowledged the warning and then made their own choices. I’m not naming names.
Pokin left first. She’s a slow hiker, and she knows it, so she gave herself a head start. Between already having partially collapsed lungs and now running a fever, she wasn’t going to be setting any speed records. As far as she knew, the plan was simple: head out early, the rest of us catch up eventually.
What she didn’t know was that D.B. had sent Manoj, the assistant guide, after her. Manoj had introduced himself the night before, but Pokin is famously terrible at recognizing faces. As in, she has genuinely misidentified Nicholas on the trail before. Her own husband. So when some guy she didn’t recognize caught up to her on the trail and said hello, she said hello back. And then he just… kept walking behind her. In silence. For about five minutes. Pokin, increasingly confused about why this stranger was following her through the Himalayas, finally turned around and told him, “I already have a guide.”
“Yes. Me,” said Manoj.
Pokin and Manoj, after she finally accepted he was, in fact, her guide.
Outside, the porters were already loading up the 3A Adventure duffel bags and heading out. Those bags weigh a significant fraction of a human being and these guys just strap them on and go.
The duffel shuffle. Our bags go up by porter. We go up by complaining.
The trail started gentle. Stone paths, green gates, and trees absolutely covered in pink blossoms. April in the Khumbu is spring, and everything that can bloom is blooming. For about twenty minutes it felt more like a garden walk than a Himalayan trek.
Then the stairs started.
Nicholas grabbed a few photos of just the two of us along the way, but we were with the main group the whole time. Perks of having long arms and a phone with a good front camera.
Nicholas in his full trail armor. Hood, mask, sunglasses. You could rob a teahouse in this outfit.
The mask wasn’t a fashion choice. The air quality on the trail is rough. Dust from the paths, pollution drifting up from the valleys, and two recovering lungs that didn’t need any more problems. Buffs, masks, and sunglasses were going to be standard equipment for the foreseeable future.
The Dudh Koshi valley opened up as we gained elevation. The glacial river cut through the bottom, pale green and fast, with mountains climbing on both sides into clouds. The scale of it is hard to describe. Everything is just… bigger than it should be. The trees are taller, the slopes are steeper, the sky is further away.
The trail passed through small settlements where the only constant was propane canisters lined up against every building. Red ones, stacked neatly, waiting for their turn to heat a teahouse or boil water. No pipelines up here. Everything arrives the same way we do: one step at a time.
The EBC trail has a traffic problem, and it’s not other trekkers.
Yak traffic. No horns. No turn signals. They do not care about you.
Yaks. Or more accurately, zopkyo, which are yak-cow hybrids, but nobody calls them that because “watch out for the zopkyo” doesn’t have the same energy. They come through in caravans, loaded with white sacks and blue crates, moving at whatever speed they feel like, and you get out of the way. Mountain side rule: stand on the uphill side of the trail. Getting nudged downhill by an animal carrying 80 kilograms of rice is not how you want your trek to end.
The universal EBC experience: pressing yourself against a stone wall while a parade of yaks ignores your existence.Personal space? The yaks have never heard of it.
I need to address something. I want a pet yak. Yaks are awesome. They’re huge, fluffy, unbothered by everything, and they live in the mountains. That’s basically my ideal roommate. Nicholas says we can’t have a yak at Bear Falls Resort. I say the HOA hasn’t specifically said we can’t.
Also, I want to ride one. I saw other trekkers riding horses (there’s literally a “Horses on Rent” sign on the trail) but nobody was renting yaks. This feels like a gap in the market.
Horses on Rent, but no Yaks on Rent. The Himalayas have a customer experience problem.
This man is carrying more weight than I will ever weigh in my entire existence.
The amount of weight these guys carry is absurd. Multiple duffel bags stacked and secured with a headstrap called a namlo, bent nearly double on stone stairs, moving faster than most trekkers with daypacks. Everything that exists in the Khumbu region got there on someone’s back or on the back of an animal. Every propane canister. Every mattress. Every bottle of Coke that costs 500 rupees (about $4 USD) at altitude. It all came up these same stairs.
Monjo. 2,835 meters. Cherry blossoms and prayer flags.
The trail passed through Monjo, where a sign for Mount Kailash Lodge marked the elevation at 2,835 meters. Cherry trees were in full white bloom over the stone paths. Prayer flags strung between buildings. If you ignored the altitude headache and the fact that every muscle below your knees was filing a complaint, it was actually quite pretty.
This is where we caught up to Pokin. She’d been waiting for us at the rest stop, having hiked the whole morning section with Manoj.
Pokin at Monjo. Waiting for us like she’d been there for hours. She probably had.
The trail is lined with mani walls, prayer wheels, and chortens (stupas). You’re supposed to pass them on the left, keeping the sacred object on your right. Nicholas explained this to me on day one and I’ve been very diligent about it. Mostly because the left side usually has more room to avoid yaks.
Nicholas saying hello to Manoj after catching up to Pokin’s group. Reunited at last.
D.B. is the lead guide from 3A Adventure. Manoj is the assistant guide who Pokin didn’t recognize. Together they’re managing five trekkers, a bear, a pile of duffel bags, and whatever logistical chaos the mountain throws at them. D.B. is the “okay, let’s go” type. Manoj is the “bistari, bistari” type, which is Nepali for “slowly, slowly,” which is advice most trekkers should take more seriously than they do. Good balance.
The settlements along the trail all look like they grew out of the mountain instead of being built on it. Stone walls, corrugated metal roofs in red and blue, wood-framed windows painted green. Everything is slightly worn and slightly beautiful.
Now back together as a full group, we continued on to the Mount Kailash Lodge for a proper drink stop. Water, tea, sitting down, and pretending we weren’t only a fraction of the way to Namche.
The mechanics finished. The door closed. The rotors spun up. And we lifted off from Lukla with no guide, no group, and a maintenance guy riding along to make sure nothing went wrong.
Just me, the pilot, a maintenance guy, and two sick humans. Totally normal.
Nicholas doing the ‘I’m fine’ face. He was not fine.
The flight to Phakding was short. A few minutes over the valley, dodging the same clouds we’d been fighting all day. The pilot found a landing spot behind a building and dropped toward it.
It was a circle of stones. Not a helipad. Not a paved surface. Not even cemented cobblestone. Just loose rocks arranged in a rough circle behind the Himalayan Sherpa Hospital. Not where I would choose to land a helicopter, but nobody asked me.
Landed. Alive. Standing on loose rocks next to a hospital, which felt appropriate given the fevers.
The mechanic swung the door open with the rotors still running. He had us jump out, then dragged our duffel bags onto the rocks. Then a 20-kilogram box of apples and pomegranates that D.B. had sent along for the trek. Then he slammed the door, gave a thumbs up, and took off. Not a single word spoken the entire time.
So there we were. Two sick trekkers and a bear, standing on a stone circle behind a hospital in a Himalayan valley, surrounded by duffel bags and a giant box of fruit, with absolutely no idea where our hotel was.
No guide. No group. No cell reception.
The Himalayan Sherpa Hospital. Where we landed. Not as a patient. Yet.This is where they landed a helicopter. On purpose.
We started hauling our 20-kilogram duffels (plus the fruit box) down a cobblestone path toward what looked like it might be a town. It was not a dignified entrance.
Hauling gear. The local guy had it handled. We did not.
Luckily, someone found us before we wandered too far. The owner of the Sherpa Shangri-La had gotten a call from D.B. and came out to collect us. Turns out our hotel was literally the next building over. We’d been dragging bags in the right direction by pure accident.
Home for the night. Duffels delivered. Fruit box somewhere behind us.
The lodge was genuinely nice. Not “nice for a remote mountain village” nice. Just nice. A cozy lounge with Himalayan panorama photos on the walls, a painted Tibetan cabinet, cushioned chairs, and that particular kind of quiet that only happens when you’re the only guests.
Nicholas in the lounge. Resting. Not gaming. That’s how you know he’s really sick.
Most flights to Lukla had been canceled that day because of the afternoon weather. Which meant most trekkers who were supposed to start their trek that day were still stuck in Kathmandu. Which meant Phakding was practically empty. We had the Sherpa Shangri-La almost entirely to ourselves.
Tea. Mask off. Attempting to feel human again.
Nicholas liked Phakding. It sat at 2,610 meters in the Dudh Koshi river valley, actually lower than Lukla, tucked between steep forested mountainsides. Quiet. Green. The kind of place where you could hear the river and not much else.
They napped. Hard. The kind of nap where you close your eyes at 3 PM and wake up to darkness and the sound of people arriving.
The rest of the group made it in after nightfall. Because our helicopter had been so late leaving Kathmandu, the hikers had started late too, and the three-hour hike from Lukla to Phakding stretched into the evening. Steve, Alice, and Po On arrived tired but healthy, which was more than Nicholas and Pokin could say.
Everyone had dinner together. First real group meal on the trek. First chance to compare notes on how the day had gone, which was mostly just everyone agreeing that today had been completely ridiculous.
Phakding was peaceful. The lodge was comfortable. The fevers were still there.
Tomorrow was the hike to Namche Bazaar. It’s the first real climb of the trek, a steep, relentless ascent that most guides describe as the toughest day of the first week. Not exactly what you want to tackle on day one of being sick.
Nicholas and Pokin talked about staying an extra night. More rest. More time to recover. But the plan had two nights built into Namche specifically for acclimatization, and those two days of rest would be there whether they arrived sick or healthy. Better to push through tomorrow and collapse in Namche than to fall behind the schedule and miss the rest days entirely.
So the plan held. Wake up early. Hike to Namche. Hope the fevers break somewhere between here and there.
Phakding was the kind of place you’d want to stay longer. But the mountain doesn’t wait, and neither did the itinerary.
