A theory. The ability to face the challenges of travel is directly proportional to the length of the trip itself. I had a month in Indochina, and on the last day I was ready to leave. Similarly, we have 3 hours of trekking left on this trip, and I’m pretty sure 3 more hours is all I have left in me.
We had an easy walking day, passing hundreds of sherpas heading up to Namche Bazar for the markets, where locals and businesses buy and trade their wares. We arrived back at Phakding, initially the first stop on our journey, at around 3.30pm and a few of us sat in our sleeping bags talking about food (we tried to change the topic, but man, we were hungry).
It was our trekking guide’s birthday, so we had a special dinner – fried potatos, vegetables, eggs and cheese (why haven’t I discovered this 14 days ago?) – and the family that owned the tea house, the porters, our guide and the rest of the group drank beer and hideous Nepalese distilled wines and cocktails for the rest of the evening, with traditional music and dancing to boot.
It was fun for a while, save that I haven’t slept properly in about a week so I didn’t drink, and struggled to keep my eyes open until 9pm, when I surrended and collapsed into bed. Maybe if it had of been Smirnoff Blacks and Ministry of Sound I would have stayed awake longer, but western dancing takes much less effort than heaving your body from a squat position and up whilst kicking your feet out. Man, I can barely walk up a mountain, and that’s just walking.
-Sarah
Sarah