Trek to Everest Basecamp to participate in Tenzing & Hillary Everest Marathon 2022
Day 1;
On the day of my flight to Lukla there was a 7hrs delay due to bad weather conditions. Luckily, the skies were clear for a brief period around 12:30pm and the flights to Lukla were set to go within 15 mins.
I met my guide/porter Santosh bhai at the airport and he took me to a local restaurant to have thukpa for lunch. As I sat there waiting for thukpa to digest the hotel owner offered me boiled potatoes with somer (yak soft cheese, chilli & garlic sauce). Something I’d never tried before and it was delicious because I believe chilli goes with everything.
By the time I had finished eating it was already 2pm. We then slowly made our way out of Lukla with the plans of staying overnight at Phakding.
There were so many stray dogs along the way and I wanted to take them all with me back home to Kathmandu. I even enquired with the airlines if I could take a dog with me on the plane and I found out that unfortunately passengers were not allowed to travel with pets.
The weather was much nicer during our trek to Phakding. It was a busy route shared by people and mules. There were people coming back to Lukla after the trek, some like me starting their trek and local people going back home.
We reached Phakding earlier than Santosh bhai had expected. It was still daylight so he suggested we walk a bit further to another village called Benkar.
There were a lot of “manes” along the way. And the general rule is to go around it anti-clock wise.
We reached Benkar at around 5:30pm and the distance covered was ~8km. And there was this beautiful waterfall just at the beginning of this village.
At the lodge I fuelled myself with the obvious daal, bhaat and tarkari.
