Day 11: Gorak Shep to Pangboche

Woke up early feeling great after my best nights sleep since Namchee. Our room was still incredibly cold, around -10 Celsius, but I think I had finally acclimatised to the 5140m of Gorak Shep.

We hit the road with a plan to get at least as far as Pheriche (4240m) on our decent down the valley. Our plan is to head up the Dudh Koshi River to Gokyo within the next 5 days. We travelled really well (fast) and got to Pheriche by 2pm so we had lunch then continued walking till we got to Pangboche (3930m). In total we descended over 1200m in about 6 hours. We would have continued further but it was starting to get dark and we were unsure about accommodation at Phorse. The lodge owners at Pangboche were  very impressed with our trek as most people would do this in 2-3 days.

The walk was beautiful,  we started well above the snowline, followed the Khumbu Glacier all the way down to its end near Dughla where we crossed the terminal moraine and then headed through a beautiful riverbed which led down through the snow line to Pheriche. After this we had a small ascent up to the Pheriche Pass before we continued down the valley to Pangboche. Trees suddenly appeared out of nowhere and we realised that it had been a few days since we had seen anything green at all. Passed some paintings on a rock face that were pretty interesting, possibly done by monks as they appeared Buddhist in nature. Got held up by groups of yaks all the way but it was nice to have the change of pace.

After our horrible accommodation in Gorak Shep we were amazed with our rooms in Pangboche. Not only were they clean, warm, painted and spacious, they also had windows that opened out to incredible views of the mountains (our window in our room at Gorak Shep was basically buried in snow).

We were able to sun out our clothes a little, change, have a good wash and even dry our socks! Its been a good day!!!

Day 8: Dingboche to Lobuche

The trek to Lobuche was pretty amazing about 90% of it was through ice and snow which really kept us on our toes. We passed some amazingly beautiful huts strewn with icicles and snowy roof's, the mountains were incredibly close and there was a really peaceful feel to the whole day.

We stopped for chai at Dughla before making our way to Lobuche where we were surprised to find very little other than really expensive accomodation (400/- per night instead of the regular 200/-).

Altitude is really starting to effect our sleep now and we generally only get 2-3 hours total each night. The thin dry air leaves us with a dry cough and a mouth like the Sahara Desert, often we would wake choking because we were not getting enough air.