Big Brothers Big Sisters Everest Base Camp Trek Dispatch

May 8, 2010 – We Arrive in Thame

This is Leila Silveira reporting from Thame. Today we woke up with several things to do. First on our schedule was a visit to the famous Namche Saturday market, which is a weekly gathering where Sherpas meet friends and trade supplies. Even though trading has been happening here for a long time the market itself is quite recent, forming in about 1965. Before 1965,trading was mostly done in Sherpa homes. Most supplies come from below Lukla and are carried up the valley by porters, dzokios (what I personally call the “low altitude yak” ) and recently I have also seen many ponies carrying loads.

We passed by Brenda’s hairdresser which she was proud to show everyone. After a quick loop at the market, we went back to our lodge to pick up our backpacks and head out towards Thame.

We traversed the valley along the Bhote Koshi Nadi river and stopped for lunch at Maya’s lodge. Maya is an amazing woman who after having lost her husband in a climbing accident in 2007, found herself struggling with debts, loans and 3 children. Despite hardship, she managed to transform her lodge into a very nice business, paid off her debts and has 3 beautiful grown kids. Her 21 year old girl has won 1st and 2nd place in the female category of the Everest Marathon for the past 5 years, which is really impressive.

After lunch we kept moving towards Thame, and by 5 pm we arrived at our lodge, Dr. Kami Sherpa’s home. Dr. Kami is the chief physician at the Khunde Hospital.

The weather was cloudy when we arrived so we decided to postpone our visit to the Thame monastery for tomorrow morning.

We settled into the lodge for tea time and a few minutes later Pasang, our favourite Tanka painter, came over to show his work. Doug was especially interested since the last time he was in Nepal he bought one of his works and he was looking forward to buying another one. He ended up buying 2 more!

Brenda has brought this tiny video camera and I decided to download what she has been filming for the past week; we really have to say a special thanks to Jim, her husband, who bought her this camera just before she left.

We spent almost 2 hours watching her films and it was hilarious. This is a small camera so most people don’t realize that she is filming. I'm just guessing that when she goes home she can make 2 videos; one with nice serious scenes and another one with strictly bloopers.