20 May 2024
This was our rest day. Hence, after my thyroid medication I chose to sleep and… I slept real like a log… Exactly at 815 AM I opened my eyes and checked time. And boom… I was startled. We had slept for some 10 hours already. Ngima too kindly had excused us. Then we got fresh and went for breakfast. My stomach wasn’t hurting anymore, so I had bread and omelette but decided that I will restrict intake of eggs.
Ngima then told us to get ready for the hike. He had planned for a small hike on the hill behind the lodge. We could see entire settlement of Dingboche from top. We reached a chorten, and then Ngima pointed towards a trail and said that’s our route for tomorrow. That was an endless plateau. Few people were walking towards other end. We spent some 30 minutes there. I tried going a bit higher on the hill but returned as the blowing wind was too chilly. We then returned to the lodge.
The weather outside was clear today. There was no network signal on my Nepalese sim card. Amruta had paid for hotel WiFi so I asked Amruta to contact a friend back home to check weather conditions of our next destinations. He sent screenshots mentioning cloudy weather for Lobuche and Everest Base Camp on both days.
We spent the day doing almost nothing. Passed time on our respective cell phones. I processed some of the pictures of flowers that I had clicked on previous days.
Like every day, Ngima and I chatted about next day’s hike. He told me about the ascents that we will be making. Tomorrow was the day when we were going to be beyond 5000 meters. Ngima also told me that we would be going little bit ahead of Lobuche. I was worried we may be staying in tents. He said that we would be staying at a place called Pyramid which was some science research establishment at foot of hill ahead of Lobuche. I had no way of checking the information. Then I told him that I was still going to be slower because I didn’t want AMS or to turn back from this point. He told me not to worry about that. We discussed weather, he said it might snow but not too much. We also discussed clothing and breaks that we could take. My research had told me that Dingboche to Lobuche is 9 kilo meters. And we were to go ahead of that. Hence, we were to start early.
In night, I gave my power bank and smart watch for charging. The dinner was rather disappointment with menu gone wrong. I had a hot chocolate before sleeping off.
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