Namche Bazaar to Tengboche (8 Oct 2006)

Our destination today is Tengboche (3900m). At first, I thought that today will only go up 400m, which is not that difficult. The first 2 hours, the trail was flat. Then, we started to go down and I knew that I was wrong. There is a river that we need to cross, which mean we need to go down all the way, crossed the bridge and then up again to an even higher altitude. After crossing the bridge, the painful journey began. The hill was steep. I climbed very slow but still felt exhausted. I started to count my steps. 1, 2, 3 ……….I reached Tengboche after counted 3300 steps. Although it’s only 1.30pm, the temperature was low. I felt cold.

After lunch, I visited the monastery(2nd photo on left) with others. After a while, I felt very tired and dizzy, so went back to Himalayan View Lodge for rest. Around 3.30pm, Hai Poh woke me up and we all gathered at the restaurant. There is a bakery at Tengboche. Teammates had bought cakes for celebrating Foung Yee’s birthday. Can you believe that we are still able to buy cakes at altitude 3900m? We sang the birthday song for her and then ate cakes. Foung Yee said this is the first time she celebrates birthday at this high altitude. It's very unique.

At that time, I had no appetite and headache. I started to “cry”. I am not really crying but tears burst out and I couldn’t stop it. I felt a bit dizzy, very unwell. Team mates found out that I had the symptoms of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) and informed the guide. I had no strength to say anything, only able to answer them by shaking or nodding my head. If my condition is getting worse, I have to descend to lower place. I was worried and did not want to descent after all this while. I went back to my room and sleep. After rested for 2 hours, I felt better. I went up to the restaurant again and drank lots of water. I was still weak, but the condition was getting better. No appetite, so only had the garlic soup and plain toast as my dinner.

I was glad I had recovered over the night and able to continue the trek.