First Day of the Trek (3/12)
I got up around 6:15 and was ready to roll. We had breakfast and were on the trail by 7:15. The first part of the trail was a dirt road that was constantly disturbed by a commuter bus. However, far more pervasive were the herds of unladen mules coming down the mountain ready to pick up fresh loads. While the trail was full of Nepalese it was nearly void of trekkers. The whole day I passed a total of six.

An interesting note that I never thought about before was that on Everest the yak shit doesn’t attract flies. I realize now that it’s a huge advantage as the warm weather at this low of an altitude keeps the crap soft and swarming with flies.

As a whole, the trek on the first day was not that spectacular. No ocular fest here. The villages are dreary, broken down, and have little charm. This is a huge contrast to the first day of the Everest hikes or even the poor villages of Burma I trekked through. I hoped it would improve. In addition, another growing problem was the speed of Padam and Seba (the porter). We hadn’t walked more than four hours and Padam was unable to match my easy walking pace of 3 1/3 mph. I got to the destination before noon and definitely wanted to continue to walk through a few more towns.

We had lunch at a town called Bahum Danda and Padam and I decided to continue further. However, Seba was no where to be found. We met another guide and a bunch of Israeli girls that were very nice. They left to trek on as we waited for Seba. Finally after two hours, I decided to run down and find him. I went all the way down the last rise and there he was plodding along. I told him of our plan and he asked “Where’s Padam?” in a not so friendly voice. So I ran back up to Padam and we waited for Seba.

Seba is definitely an odd one. On one hand he seems very honest and caring and on the other hand very stubborn. He told us this was how fast he walks and if we don’t like it to get another porter. I had never experienced a porter who was anything but humble and hard working. He agreed to carry our bags (which I had lightened before the trip quite considerably) to the next town. We figured we could decide what to do there.

As luck would have it, about twenty minutes out it started to pour. I didn’t think it rained this time of year, so I was fairly unprepared. We hid out with the Israeli girls at some family’s house and waited for it to stop. I feared how wet my bag with Seba would fair.

After half an hour it stopped raining and we decided to head to Syange. It was another grungy town, but at least it had electricity. I really wanted to go further, but with the similar sounding towns I didn’t realize this was where we had told Seba to meet us.

When we got there, all the Israelis and I stayed in the same place. Quite a contrast to the solitude of Gokyo. It was a culture shock to have so many trekkers in one place. Forget what I said earlier about only seeing a few, I was now swimming in trekkers. I hung out with a German girl named Sandra and the few girls from Israel, but in the end we called it an early night.

Our destination for tomorrow was Bagarchhap, because that is as far as Seba the porter was willing to agree upon. We desperately needed to find another porter. He even barked at Padam that it was Padam’s responsibility to ensure his safety. While this is generally true, we were very clear about our intended pace before we left Katmandu. What a change this was from the great porters we had on our previous treks.

The story continues...