Camping Tourism
I walked about five miles today. We dropped about a thousand feet from Lukla, but climbed about the same to get to Jorsalle where we are spending the night. Not surprisingly, the straight and down parts of the trail were easy, while the climbs were a challenge. I think the combination of my cold, the altitude, and my general physical condition contributed to my difficulties going uphill. Tomorrow is the big challenge, as we will make a 2000 foot climb up Namche Hill to Namche Bazaar. If the weather is clear we should see Mt Everest, along with other peaks, on the way up.
I took lots of photos and some videos today of the mountains and river, of tourism, of villages and farmers, of tourism, of yaks and prayer stones and flags (always pass them on the left), and of tourism. There is an amazing amount of tourism here. This is the slow season, but we still saw quite a few groups of visitors — mostly, but not exclusively, Japanese. We passed through a lot of villages today and all of them had guest houses, restaurants, and shops.
Photo: Yaks in front of a typical guest house.
The guest houses vary from the very basic ones that we are staying in, with minimal facilities, to upscale ones with attached bathrooms and hot showers, and occasionally internet access. Most all take MasterCard and Visa. Most are also built quite recently, perhaps within the past five years, and the communities look quite prosperous as a result. The standard of living for most of the people, however, is still quite poor by western standards.
The guest houses that we have stayed in, so far, are very basic. They are built of single pains of wood, which means you can hear everything in the rooms next to your own. There is a shared toilet in the hall way — a western one the first and an Asian style squatting toilet tonight. The place tonight runs on solar power and so has no lights in the rooms, just a candle, which I did not use. The headlamp that I brought works just fine. Although we are indoors, it still feels very much like camping.