Day 14: Gokyo to Gokyo Peak to Machhermo

Woke up feeling great after a good long sleep. We had a nice breakfast at our lodge (where the view of the lake was incredible), packed a day bag and headed up Gokyo Peak (5360m). Gokyo Peak (or Gokyo Ri) is a small mountain located just beside the town of Gokyo and is famous for its great views of Everest, Nuptse, Cho Oyu and several other key peaks in the Himalayas (not to mention great views of Gokyo and it's lake).

The walk up was longer and harder than the trek up Kala Pattar, took us around 2 and a half hours to reach the summit. The view was magnificent and we spent about 45 minutes up there just soaking it all in.

We quickly descended using a modified glissading method (standing and using our trekking poles like ski poles to stabilise and push ourselves down the snowy slope). It was a lot of fun and we reached the bottom in around 30 minutes.

Once down we had lunch and then made a decision to depart the beautiful town of Gokyo as it was quite empty and we had exhausted all the available activities (tracks to nearby lakes were still snowed shut). The Renjo La was still very dangerous so we decided to head back down the West side of the Dudh Koshi River Valley towards Namchee Bazaar.

We left Gokyo about 2pm and 3 hours later we were in Machhermo about 10km down the valley. It was a nice snowy walk (cold and a little dark) along the glacier and then when that ended along the Dudh Koshi. The last 2 or 3 km was in thick mud which made us pretty dirty but thankfully we were wearing our gaiters on account of the snow so at least we mostly stayed clean.

Machhermo is a nice little town mostly made up of hotels and tea houses for trekkers like us and is situated in a snowy valley on the edge of a small stream. We got a nice room for 200/- per night and made our way to the restaurant for our nightly game of Yanif (an Israeli card game). While there I had a pretty large argument with a Nepali guide who was trying to cheat a German couple that we had met. The guide was quite taken back when I started correcting him in Hindi and pretty soon our argument caught the attention of a bunch of other Nepali men who upon hearing what I was saying (and the conviction I was saying it with) decided that they should steer clear. No win for you today my Nepalese friend.