Meng's Travels: EBC Day 1: Kathmandu to Lukla to Phakding

The day has finally come to "face the challenge." Here we are, to venture into the unknown for the next 11 days. Our plan on Day 1 is to fly from Kathmandu to Lukla to start our trek. The 40-minute flight over the mountains is an intriguing flight. You see the sprawl of Kathmandu and the mountainous terrain. You are so close to the mountain that you can almost touch it. Our flight was supposed to depart at 9:30am but due to a number of unexplained events, we finally took off 3 hours late. By the time we arrived in Lukla, we were ready for lunch. At 2 pm we were ready to take our first steps. By then it'd have been too late for us to reach our original first night destination, Monjo. We ended up spending the night in Phadking, which means we have a time deficit of about 3 hours. We have to make up for it the next day so that we can be in Namche Bazaar by evening of the second day.

We officially entered into Sagarmatha National Park, a short time after leaving Lukla. Our permits and passports are checked at the entrance. Our tour company and guide arranged all the paperwork. It's nice not to have to be burdened by all the permits. Already we are starting to run into other trekkers. The beautiful mountain scenery starts to unfold. Lukla is at 2840m elevation while Phakding is at about 2610m so we are actually going down slightly.

At Phadking we stayed at the Mountain Resort Tea House, a typical tea-house on the EBC Trekking Route. Two of us share a room except for Bert. Most of the time we share toilets with other trekkers. The rule of thumb is that as you get deeper into the mountains, the prices go higher. That is true of everything, especially food items. If you think of the amount of work to transport these goods, whether by yak, mule or porters, it is justifiable. Our guide suggested at the start of the trip that we should buy this internet access called EverestLink. This gives us internet access at all the places we stop for 2,000 rupees. Otherwise we'd have to pay for internet access at each tea house for about 500 rupees per 24-hour period. All of us signed up for it. We set up a messaging group on WhatsApp and that allows us to communicate with each other easily, whether we are physically close to one another or not.

We had a nice dinner and went to bed around 9:30pm. We have to get ready for a long hike tomorrow to Namche Bazaar.