Big Brothers Big Sisters Everest Base Camp Trek Dispatch

May 6, 2010 – Shopping and Exploring in Namche

Here is Leila Silveira reporting from Namche, our rest day! I was awakened at 6am by Mingma to let me know that even though the weather was sort of clear, it was not clear enough for us to hike uphill to the Everest view point. Everest and its neighbours were all covered by clouds. But as I was discussing this with Mingma, our team members all woke up and went outside their rooms where they had a panoramic view of Namche and the mountains that surround it, Thamserku and Kangtega, both above 21,650ft/6600m. It was absolutely breathtaking.

Chris told me that when she woke up and looked from her bed through the window and saw the mountains, she just couldn’t believe the beauty. It is true, Namche is a beautiful town and its location surrounded by mountains gives it a magical feeling, sort of like in the book Lost Horizon, a Shangri-la.

Well, now we were all awake and it was hard to go back to sleep. The sun was just rising and the mountains were too inviting for us to just turn around and go back to sleep.

I changed the breakfast time to 7 am and asked for hot tea to be served. Might as well wake up if we can’t go back to sleep. During breakfast we all had plans for things to do in Namche. I was all for a massage, Brenda wanted to have her hair cut and do some shopping and everyone else also needed some extra gear for the upcoming trek.

Andrew was thinking about pizza at the bakery. We all agreed to have lunch at the bakery at noon and left down the hill towards Namche. Mingma and Japiang, our trekking guides, also joined us just in case we needed some help with carrying our shopping items. It turned out to be a good idea. There was definitely some shopping going on!

We decided to make our first stop at the massage place just to check if there were openings in the schedule. It turned out that he was only available in the morning, so Trevor jumped in and took the first slot. Chris was next and I went last.

Then we went shopping while Trevor stayed to have his massage. We stopped at Tsedam’s shop, one of our favourite stops, and then walked around Namche just checking out every shop. We all met around noon at the bakery and pizza was on the menu, which Andrew was quite happy about.

After lunch I took Brenda to have a hair cut at Namche Hair Salon. They did a great job!

We then went back to our lodge for an afternoon rest, tea time, and dinner. Wally has just showed up from Everest Base camp with the Hanesbrands team and is spending the night here. Everyone really enjoyed spending time catching up with him. He will be with us for another couple of nights in Khumjung and Pangboche.

We finished our night just talking and relaxing with Indian Idol on the television in the background.

The last news today is that we managed to get the massage therapist to come to our hotel. I really wanted Wally to meet him since I really like his techniques but Wally decided to go tomorrow morning instead, so Doug took his spot. He is having a foot massage, his first ever! I just got a report from him that he loved it! His feet are feeling much more relaxed.

Stay tuned, we will keep you updated on all our experiences!