Namche Bazaar to Pangboche

I woke up today feeling much better than yesterday. My Withings smart watch showed I had 7 hours and 11 minutes of sleep. To top it off, the owner organised me a shower and towel for 700 rupees (£3.50) and worth every rupee. The shower was a lovely 42 degrees hot and I gave myself a good wash for 10 minutes. I used their towel so mine would not get wet as its difficult to dry stuff out here.

We ate breakfast. Four fried eggs, a slice of toast, and a pancake with honey and jam. Dhanu took some videos. We said goodbye to Raj from SummitClimb who wanted to take a rest day in Namche. It’s generally recommended to take a rest day to acclimatise, and Namche is almost always used as the first rest day. For me, I wanted to get higher, so as not to lose the benefit from the altitude training I had done. Dhanu the videographer left us too as he went to get the next part of the drone permit from Namche. Geljen and I left around 8:45am.

The first part of the trek is really beautiful as you can look right down the valley, and up the valley towards the beautiful Ama Dablam. There are multiple places to take some great photos of Ama Dablam and it towers above the valley in the distance with monumental prestige. It hardly seems possible that I summitted Ama Dablam in November 2024. Looking up at her reminded me how tough it was, as she towered high above us in the distance.

We stopped in a nice little place called Phunki Thanga. I had spaghetti with cheese, tomato and garlic. We stopped for around 45 mins. This was a normal lunch spot before the tough hike up to Tengboche.

We left around 11:40am, and made it up to the monastery in Tenboche around 1.5 hours later. It was a steep elevation gain from 3250m to 3860m. Although it’s only 600m, it was still tough going. There are a couple of good rest places, and lots of people were stopping for a breather. We arrived around 1:45pm and looked inside the monastery. Dhanu also flew the drone to get some footage.

The sign at Tengboche said 2 hours to Pangboche, however, we did it in about 1.5 hours or slightly less. Unfortunately we checked into Sonam Lodge again which I had arranged with Dan not to check into, as I didn’t really enjoy it when I came here to summit Ama Dablam. However, Dan is a busy guy and the message probably got lost, but its ok. Just get on with it.

Hydration is important at this altitude, and I drank over 3 litres of water today. More if you include the honey lemon ginger tea. Normally it feels hard to drink that amount, but today it was not to difficult with all the hiking and it was hot in the sun.

It was a beautiful day today and I had to apply factor 50 twice. As we have now got to Pangboche, the clouds have come in (as so often it seems to do in the afternoon). I’ve got a mild headache (suboccipital) and sitting enjoying a pot of lemon honey ginger tea. The electricity power keeps dropping at the lodge and so my Starlink is not much use.

Stats
Altitude: 3980m
Elevation Gain: 1088m
Distance: 15.13km
Time: 6 hours 41min