Everest Trek, Day 12 - Monjo to Lukla

Only 5.5 hours of trekking today and we were back at Lukla. Unfortunately, by now I was pretty sick - congested, chills, sore throat - so it was one of my most difficult days. After a few hours, Tashi took my pack, which made it easier for me, but not exactly easy. (This was the second time I had my pack taken - one of our porters, Femba, took my pack the day we made it to base camp. I had a pretty bad reaction to the altitude above 14,000 feet and had a headache for five days that felt like someone was drilling into the back of my head. Lesson learned . . . use Diamox properly the next time, or stay below 13,000 feet!)

It rained during last few hours of the trek to Lukla, but that made me more determined to get there. The faster group was long out of site, and the slower few were behind me, so I spent much of that afternoon hiking on my own. But you're never really alone out there - this route is the main route into the mountains, so you're continually passing other hikers, yaks trains, donkeys, horses, and local porters carrying ungodly amounts of things on their backs.

I arrived in Lukla around 4:00. Fortunately, I had looked up the name of the hotel the night before so I knew where to go. Lukla's by far the biggest town in the area and not some place you want to wander around aimlessly looking for your trekking group. Anyway, when I met up with the group, I found that Tashi had given me my own room for the night, so I had a king-size bed with an actual bathroom (sink, toilet, shower), attached. The hot water was only on for one hour, so everyone scrambled to get showers quickly. Then I slept until dinner.

At dinner, we sat with our porters (or "the boys," as Tashi prefers to call them). Some folks were happy to be able to eat meat again - it's not advised to eat meat at altitude and it's very expensive, so most of us hadn't had any meat for about 9 - 10 days. After we ate (I had Yak Steak . . . tough!), we presented "the boys" with their tips and thanked them for their help. It's very unusual to have the porters come back to help people along the trail, especially after they've raced to get our bags to the next town. But with so many people sick and struggling in the beginning, Tashi would call our guys and they would come back to carry bags and walk alongside anyone who needed help, which was me on one occasion. We shook hands and hugged each one of them - they did a great job for us.

Then I was off to bed while five or so of the group went down to the bar where, from what I heard, a very good time was had by all.