07/14--Day 5-- Debuche to Dingboche--25/09/2022

 We set off at our usual time of 7 am from the Rivendell tea house to our destination for the day-- Dingboche. 

As we trekked, we could see the scenery change gradually before our eyes-- glimpses of the alpine meadlowland to come as well as occasional morraines and bare patches of hills caused by recent landslides. In some places the path turned extremely narrow with a sheer drop of many hundreds of feet and we carefully negotiated these stretches, hugging the sides of the cliffs.

On our way, we caught sight of Himalayan tahr, grazing on the cliffs below us, standing unconcernedly on sheer slopes with a sure-footedness that only mountain goats possess. The weather also was gradually turning colder and we now began seeing true yaks, rather than the dzos (cross between yak and  cow) that we had seen in Lukla and Namche Bazar. 

One of the beautiful things that happened this day was when a horse (probably put to pasture) suddenly emerged from the mist, nuzzled Rathika for some time, seeking to play with her. After a while, it disappeared into the mist as suddenly as it came. 

The countryside was beautiful in patches and bare in others-- the red and green bushes, fields with stone embankments and houses with slate roofs, the gompas and gateways on the mountains, all gave the entire area a story-book feel. As we neared the end of the trek for the day, it suddenly began drizzling and we all took out our ponchos for the first time in five days. We wore them for a while and took pics and then the rains stopped. 

We reached Dingboche and after a lengthy walk in the village, we reached our guest house. The tea house had a series of rooms on the ground floor spread over two arms, and the dining area was on the first floor, at the centre where the two arms intersected. The rooms were very small, though clean and the bathroom really tiny. Also, as we had been warned by Tenzing in the previous night's dinner briefing, from here on there would be no running water and water in the bathrooms would be stored in drums. Rathika and I spied an Indian toilet located outside and decided that we were better off using it than the one inside the room. 

For a change, we reached early (around 3.30 pm) and enjoyed the french fries and chilli sauce we ordered on the first floor dining area. Also, in the courtyard, we saw a little 2 year old kid (belonging to the people who ran the tea house), who never stopped running at any point of time in the two days we observed her. She didn't speak a word but played happily with whoever would play with her. Vidya, Malthy and Shalini amused themselves playing card games in the courtyard outside, even as the mist came rolling in.

The next day would be acclimatization day in Dingboche and so we retired early to our rooms.

Highlight of the day:- Jayashree's comment in Tamil on seeing our Poncho-clad pics "Ennavo nanga Harry Potter characters aa maarittom endru ninaichom, photo paathadukk appram dhaan we realised we looked like seriaana maatukaaranga" 😉 (In our minds, we thought we looked like Harry Potter charactres when we wore the ponchos,  in reality we realised on seeing the pics that we looked like cowherds).