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On the evening of October 1st we had our last dinner in Namche Bazaar with the group for awhile.  Lila Bishop joined us as a guest and it was a really relaxing and enjoyable evening.  The next day on the 2nd, Dick and Kathy decided to stay in Namche at the lodge for a while.  Susan walked for about half of the day with the rest of the trekkers and also the climbing group out towards the village of Thame and then Susan also returned to the lodge in Namche with her favorite Sherpa Chung Karma. 

Susan, as it happens to a lot of us was already tied to the internet in Namche, and she knows now as we learned over the years that once you start communicating you have to keep communicating to make sure everybody at home understands what is going on and what a good time you are having.  So she took care of the communication problems and enjoyed Namche some more and now today we are all reunited of course.

The rest of us continued on to Thame.  Thame has been one of our favorite Sherpa villages for years and years.  It’s a classic Sherpa village, not modern at all like Namche Bazaar.  We have a lot of old friends in Thame.  The group met Passang Sherpa who you know from previous dispatches at Berg Adventures, the Sherpa who lost his fingers on a climbing expedition years ago, who paints beautiful Thanka paintings.  The entire group enjoyed looking at Passang’s work and several people were happy to purchase one of his beautiful Thanka paintings.

This morning October 3rd we all went up to the Thame monastery together, one of my very favorite places in the world; a classic Himalayan monastery.  Our audience with the Kalu Rinpoche or the Reincarnated Lama who resides in Thame was peaceful, powerful and impressive.  We spent some time with him and before we left we were blessed with these beautiful silk blessing scarves or Khatas.

When we went back into Thame Meagan and Grant and I were surprised to see a very familiar face, Aarita Sherpa.  Whom you will recall just one year ago was one of Berg Adventures climbing Sherpas on Everest.  He’s one of the many famous climbing Sherpas who live in the Thame area.  It was a happy reunion as we spent some time with him and his wife in their home and before they left, both Meagan and Grant had been presented with beautiful medallions that they wore around their neck of the Dali Lama.  It was a special moment for Meagan, especially having climbed last year with Aarita and now she’s off again to climb this season with this blessing from a good friend.

We had a great walk back from Thame, back towards Namche we are at the village of Khunde right now which is about 1000 feet above Namche.  Coming back this way today we continue to run into really interesting folks.  It’s surprising to me how many folks are from the plain states and Midwest this year in Nepal .  We had a big group from Nebraska , eight folks or so with us last night at Thame. 

Today we met a wonderful woman Harriet Thomas, 79 years olds from Iowa .  We had a great lunch with her today, she shared her adventures and enthusiasm for Nepal and of course we shared our adventures with her.  She has a wonderful spirit and it was really an inspiration for us to leave her and see someone enjoying Nepal as much as we are.  Harriet has been one of the finest folks we met on the entire trip so far.

Now as I said we are in Khunde and the entire group is reunited.  Susan Cooley, Dick and Kathy came up from Namche today.  Ang Temba stayed with them while we were out at Thame.  The entire crew is back together and we are going to enjoy a great dinner together this evening.  Stay tuned as we will keep reporting our adventures from Nepal as we can.

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