October 6 - Visit to Thame Monastery and Khumbu Bijuli Power Project

We woke this morning to tea in bed, at 6 am, and immediately walked up the hill from the village of Thame to visit the Thame Monastery. The Thame Monastery is 350 years old and has a classic Himalayan monastery atmosphere. It is beautiful inside, there are Thanka paintings, Tibetan text that are also 300 years old and it is a very peaceful and serene place.

Tomorrow we will visit Tangboche Monastery, a more famous monastery, but one that is actually under 90 years old. We will talk more about Tangboche when we get there.

But this was a really peaceful serene way to start our morning. In this particular trekking group; Dafna, Amelie, Mark and Steve are really strong trekkers so the sherpas and I always know that the miles to cover on the trail are never an issue.

Today we did one of my favourite things - we descended back towards Namche on the Bothe Kosi and visited the power plant for the Khumbu Bijuli Power Project. This project was started after the original one was lost in 1985 when a glacial dam failed and a giant flood started. The Austrians helped with the development of the project and the Sherpa people took over the administration of the small project a few years ago. It provides light so people have cleaner homes, better cooking and living facilities in the Khumbu. It is really a great little project, as I said it is administered by Sherpas. We enjoyed visiting the power plant.

Then to get back across the Bhote Kosi we did a little technique I knew Emelie was going to find challenging; we came back across the Bhote Khosi via wooden buckets suspended on cables, the way the sherpas go back and forth when they need to go to do some work on the power plant. Quite a thrilling and scenic ride, the entire group including Amelie, enjoyed it.

Now we will be on our way to the sherpa village of Khunde. I will report to you from Khunde before we start trekking tomorrow morning or along the way to Tangboche.