As you might imagine, the flights in and out of Lukla are, to a certain degree, subject to the whims of Mother Nature. Trying to land a plane on a short uphill runway in snow and fog is less than ideal so when the aforementioned storm rolled in last Sunday, the flights in and out did not go as planned which meant our Sherpa subjects who were meant to fly on Monday were backed up and didn't fly. The good news: we got a surprise day off. The bad news: their trek got shifted back which leaves us with eight straight days of testing (more on this later, let's focus on the good).
We used our day off to trek up towards sunny Thame (roughly pronounced Ta-May, thus the clever title of this post). Namche, where our lab is based, sits at the confluence of two river valleys. One of the valley heads up to Everest Base Camp and gets plenty of traffic, the other continues up and ultimately terminates at a pass that leads into Tibet. This canyone gets much less traffic. About 2.5 hours up this valley, the trail leaves out of the west end of Namche and travels high above the valley floor through a few small villages: Phurte, Thamo, and finally arriving at Thame.
This is a helipad just above Namche. I've never landed a helicopter before, but I feel like this might qualify as a compact parking spot
You'd think it might be hard to motivate yourself to go for a day hike in a place where you have views like the one above just outside your front door. You'd be wrong though. Here is a picture of the river that wriggles down the river valley back towards Namche.
Word has it that in a couple weeks this whole area will start to green up. Then it will actually be a nice view.
As we pushed on towards Thame and the trail goes in and out of small villages, it can often be difficult to decide which trail will emerge on the other side. The matter is complicated by the unending number of yak trails that run in and out of the mountain side. I am no biologist but I think that yaks must be some sort of hybrid between a cow and a mountain goat, boldly going where no bovine has gone before. We found ourselves trying to traverse the increasingly steep slope on a series of such trails until we realized we were far below the trail. When we finally gained the main trail, there was some discussion as to whether we should return to Namche for our already-paid-for lunch or press on to Thame even though we had lost some time. We pressed on, and what a shame it would have been otherwise:
Warm welcome - here is the Thame gatekeeper mid-cud-chew. I'm pretty sure I could have punched him in the nose and he wouldn't have blinked.
Buddhist paintings on the rock wall that abuts the trail and bridge that crosses into Thame.
A trailside juniperus recurva on the way into Thame with Andy and Jildou on the trail.
Those who have been to Nepal may recognize the staple dal baat (dal = lentil soup, baat = rice). There wasn't a lot of traffic so ordering there was sort of like asking a woman on the side of the road to cook you a meal - the food took over an hour - but the stop was well worth the wait. The dal tasted of the open fire it was most likely cooked on and it was served to us by a large woman who brought us seconds and wore traditional Nepalese garb plus purple and pink sneakers (can't believe I didn't take a picture). Her husband was a short wiry guy with an infectious giggle. They had us write our order down.
I know this might offend some of my cousins, but this was even better than eating on the deck at Alf's.
The return trip was fast. We marched home in time to greet the belated arrival of our first Sherpa trek and it was back to hard work in the lab. We've been having a great time with this group and when my head stops spinning in a few days, I'll write it all down. Quick hillclimb record update: 10 min 50 s
Namaste
So awesome!! Dream trip!
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