Shopping Day

During the night, when I got out of bed, my calves were stiff, so I took two Tylenols and went back to sleep.

In the early morning, I heard Dan retching.  How miserable.

7:00 AM:  Ming checked in on me.  The sherpas followed close behind with Sherpa tea and wash water.

In the main dining hall for breakfast, a med check station was set up at a table in the front of the room.   Seeing my high pulse rate, Annie warned I needed to drink more water to thin my blood.

After breakfast, we picked up our daypacks and gathered outside the dining hall.  We were going to visit the village monastery.  The men with zipped-off pant legs were asked to put the pant legs back on, because exposed legs were frowned upon in the monastery.  One of the guys said he’d do it when we got there.  Ming told him the monastery was next door – literally.

At the monastery, Ming explained the functions of the different rooms of the monastery.  One room had a wall of 216 cubby holes containing colorful rectangular boxes.  In each box contained a chapter/volume of the holy manuscript written in Sanskrit, printed using wood block presses, double-sided on rectangular strips of paper.  A man wearing a white tee shirt and blue Mountain Hardware vest answering Ming’s questions was not a docent, but the resident monk!  The monk read the holy manuscript passages from a box that was already sitting on his desk.  Ming said the holy manuscript was still written in the old language – like the Bible printed in Latin.

After the reading, the monk picked up a plastic shopping bag, said something to Ming, who translated that, if we wanted, we could obtain a blessed red cord necklace from the monk.  We lined up.  I was the third recipient.  The monk chanted something as he double knotted the blessed cord around my neck.  I was not quick thinking enough to ask someone to take my picture.  I took pictures of Lily getting her cord tied on.  She asked me to make sure the angle didn’t make her butt look big.  (This became a running inside joke throughout the rest of our trek.  Annie asked Lily not to repeat it out loud again.)

We continued our morning with an acclimatization hike to a viewpoint of Mount Everest.  We waited for the clouds to clear Everest before photographing.  I wanted to wait for the clouds to move a little more for another shot, but it was time to go.

Back to town, we visited a Sherpa cultural museum, showing a “typical” Sherpa home (except without the labels on most of the items on the walls and shelves), two photo galleries of Sherpa life (one themed on the marriage process and the other on famous Sherpas and Everest summiteers).  The tour was topped off with a slide show using most of the photos in the galleries.  When I sat down for the slideshow on a plastic chair in that cold, dark viewing room, I leaned back on my Camelback.  I felt something wet and cold at the bottom of the bag.  I took it off and left it on the floor.  After it was over, Chelli helped me check the Camelback.  It was fine.  I hadn’t sealed it correctly, so my leaning on it forced the water up and out the top.  After dinner, when I refilled it with water, a sherpa showed me the correct way to seal it.

Back to the Zamling dining room for lunch:  Mo-mo’s (Noni’s favorite) stuffed with yak meat and fried potato slices.  Mo-mo’s are just like pot stickers – crescent-shaped dumplings.  The Japanese call them gyoza.  “Gyoza” means something like the “F” word in Nepalese.  Ming was very nervous that someone among us would say “gyoza’ out loud in front of the other sherpas.  He sent all the sherpas out of the dining room as soon as the mo-mo’s were served so they’d be out of earshot should someone say the “G” word.

Yak meat tastes very much like gamey lamb with the consistency of beef (think buffalo or elk).

Lily, Sharon, Tim and I went shopping at the bazaar.  The streets were not crowded, it being near the end of trekking season.  We stopped into a sports equipment shop.  The proprietor was sitting on the floor in the right corner from the entrance.  I asked for trekking poles.  He leaped up with a smile, eager to assist.  We picked through the pieces of poles to assemble two full sets.  He said these were pieces of poles other trekkers left because their poles were broken.  Ming told us that poles would cost about 17,000 NPR.  Leslie hemmed and hawed and got him down to 900 NPR.  I only had 540 INR (= 850 NPR) with me.  I gave it all to him, with apologies, showing him my empty wallet.  Lily paid him the equivalent of 850 NPR in addition to her 400 NPR thermos and headlamp for $30 USD.

Lily and I debated on getting a massage.  In the end we decided to skip it.  Annie had forewarned that if we got a massage in Namche Bazaar, we should remember to keep our panties on, because one of her fellow trekkers completely disrobed for her massage and the masseuse “took a peek under the sheet.”

With difficulties keeping my cell phone battery charged, I thought it’d be easier to buy a cheap digital watch.  I didn’t bring mine thinking I could always use my cell phone.  At the edge of the village, Lily and I went into a shop run by a very sour-faced Indian man.  I asked for a watch on the shelf behind him.  He brought it down.  It was 1650 NPR.  Lily pointed out loud that it was dirty, used and needed the wrist strap repaired.  He pulled out a plastic storage box full of wristwatches.  He pulled my choice out.  I offered 800 NPR.  He turned around and pulled a different watch off the shelf.  Plopping it in front of me, he said, “This one’s 900.”  We walked.

As we left that shop, Lily saw a passing yak take a dump on the street outside the shop in front of toilet paper stacked on the shop’s sidewalk.  The yak’s horn knocked over a roll of toilet paper onto its dump.

4:00 PM back to our room then into the shower line for our tent shower.  Bob and Chelli were before Lily and me.  Bob went into one shower tent.  Chelli went into the second.  Chelli made loud groans of joy from his hot water shower.  I’m sure he was especially loud for our entertainment.

The two showers each consisted of a narrow tarp tent with a tarp floor.  Inside, there was a folding camp chair and a barrel of hot water with a small pitcher.  I put the items I wanted to keep dry on the camp chair, before carefully removing my clothes.  After lathering up, I used the pitcher to pour hot water over me to rinse.  Mingled with the cool air of the outdoors, the hot water felt great as it rinsed the trekking dust and sweat from my body.

On my way to tea, I dropped off some laundry with the lodge’s owner.  The lodge is one of the few lodges for miles with a full sized electric washer and dryer.  The charges:  50 NPR per item (a pair of socks counts as one item).

During tea the day before, Frank had played a trick on Craig.  Frank asked, “Hey Craig, what’s the capital of Thailand?”  Craig, knowing the trick well, covered his crotch just as Frank backhanded it answering, “Bang-cock!”  Before dinner, Annie sat down next to me at the head of the long table.  She announced she was getting ready to play the trick on Ted when he arrived.  When Ted arrived, he stood by Annie waiting for her to move so he could sit down.  Annie asked, “Hey Ted, what’s the capital of Nepal?”  Immediately the Colorado brothers chorused “Thailand!”  We all laughed at Annie’s botched trick.  Annie was doubling over with laughter.  Ted just gave us a bewildered look, shrugged his shoulders and took a seat next to Annie.

Chelli had come down with a slight cold (he thinks from Bob, who caught it on the airplane enroute from Canada to Nepal).  He was sequestered at a different table across the dining room.  Every once in a while Chelli would, in his very English accent, speak up with gems such as, “I’m over here.” or “Some food for the leper?”

I had read that Namche Bazaar is known for having good apple pie.  Our cook baked us an apple pie for dessert.  It was a huge pie.  Annie cut it into 18 pieces. The slices, though narrow and long, were delicious.

I hung around the dining table after dinner shooting the breeze while waiting for my laundry to be delivered, as we needed to pack everything tonight to be ready to head out tomorrow morning.  Ming assisted by asking the hostess for the status of my laundry.  She said it was drying and instructed that I go to my room.  She’ll bring it to me tonight.  On my way back to my room, I checked the dryer, which was not running.  It was empty.  I checked the washer, which was not running.  It was full of clean, wet laundry.  So I put the wet laundry into the dryer, set it for 45 minutes and proceeded back to my room.

In my room, I packed for tomorrow and fell asleep around 11 pm still waiting for my laundry.