Day 6: Namche Baazar to Kyangjuma
Starting Point: (27.8069, 86.7140)
End Point: (27.7830, 86.7220)
Total Miles: ~3.5 miles (3–4 hours)
After raining last night, I woke up early to an incredibly clear view and it is one of those things that you just don’t understand until you’re here. It can be overcast and cloudy during the days - but the mornings are perfect for a few hours until the sun rises and the heat from the sun causes evaporation from the mountainsides.
This morning, we woke up early to take a quick walk up to the Tenzig Norgay Sherpa memorial. He was one of the first people to summit Everest and is the most well-known Nepalese person in modern history. His contributions to mountaineering helped pave a path for future generations.
In the image above, you can see the peak of Everest on the far left. On the right is Lhotse and wall in front of Everest is Nuptse. It was such an incredible view and you can see the snow blowing from the peaks!
After a short stay, we walked back down to our lodge to have breakfast and get packed for today’s trek.
We left Namche Baazar on our way to Kyangjuma. It was a bit of a rough start, all of us were feeling the altitude and woke up with headaches. I have been battling this upper respiratory infection and my chest felt heavy today. It could have been easy to throw in the towel, but I pushed through, once again! Seriously, I wish I could catch a break because this has been dragging me down for the past two weeks.
The climb was long - the ascent was over 300m and was another tough climb. We slowly worked our way up above the tree line to the Sagarmatha Next museum.
This museum was built to discuss the issue with trash in the Khumbu region. With an increase in tourism (over 40,000 people visit this region each year) it had started to create a problem. With no simple solution and no organized way to deal with the problem, the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) was formed to help clean up the area.
As part of this, Sagarmatha Next was created as a non-profit to help educate visitors and locals and help recycle plastics and other materials through artwork. They sponsor artists from around the world who come to Nepal to create artwork that is displayed and sold at their museum. They also have a program where you can take a kilo of plastics back down to Lukla to be processed for recycling.
The have a shop both at the museum and in Kathmandu where you can purchase products that have been made from recycled materials from the bottles in the region.
I thought it was a really good exhibit, and they also had a virtual reality experience where you could experience the climb up Everest. It was very cool and I was really impressed by the whole experience.
After we finished up, the trail started to level off and we walked along the ridge line for awhile before we started our descent into the village of Khumjung. It was here that we saw the school that Edmund Hillary built for the Sherpa people back in the 1960s. The school was closed today because their semester just ended, but we had a chance to walk through the grounds.
We quietly walked through the rest of the village and then entered a rhododendron forest where we made our descent into Kyangjuma. I could see our tents from the ridge and was happy that I made it through another day on the trail.
Tomorrow will be a difficult day - over 10 miles, we are hiking to Pangboche. It will be another day with serious altitude gain and I’ll be honest, I’m kind of dreading it.
This afternoon I am going to focus on rest, see if I can get a little nap and try to recover a little.
