I left from the Hotel Red Planet in Kathmandu for what I was led to believe was a 5:30am bus to Lukla. After being ripped off by the taxi (I was too tired to really care about 200 rupees), I paid my Rs 500 and got on the "Supper[sic] Express" bus to Jiri. Well the 5:30 bus turned into the 6:30ish bus, but it finally left with seats full of Nepalis and the aisle full of batteries for solar panels.
Eight hours and a plate of dal bhat later I arrived in dusty, pretty miserable looking, Jiri. A few lodges and trekking shops (all selling very obviously fake North Face gear) dotted the road. I started trekking and saw a few other trekkers hanging around Jiri, but none seemed headed my way. A Nepali teenager showed me through a few confusing intersections and I made my way to Shivalaya for the evening.
The next few days were all walking through the so-called middle hills area. I stayed the next night in Shivalaya, Bhandhar, then Dagchu. In Dagchu I slept the night in the kitchen/dining room area of a lodge run by an old climbing sherpa who fed me more than I ever wanted to be fed. The area was very green with lots of small streams running down the endless ridges that I was expected to climb over and down all day every day.
The next day I reached Junbesi. After wandering around the town for a while I saw what looked like the head of a westerner in a lodge dining room. With great happiness, as I hadn't seen a westerner since Jiri and hadn't talked to one for more than 10 seconds since I left Kathmandu, I got a room at that lodge for the night. Turns out two Danish brothers, Chris and Hans, were on a similar itinerary to me and had taken a day off. Feeling a bit tired I also took the next day off, saying goodbye to the Danes, but sure to see them again. An hour trek above Junbesi was a Buddhist monastery, a good side trip for a day off. Up at the monastery there was a huge stupa (man for size):
I went all the way up to the Gompa where hundreds of nuns and several dozen monks resided. I met an old nun who had escaped from Tibet and has been living in the monastery every since.
The weather so far had been... marginal... at best. Every morning was clear. And by clear I mean, it wasn't raining. I can't remember seeing blue sky at any point in the first week. At 1pm it would start raining no matter what - sometimes it would pour, sometimes it would mist and the clouds beforehand never held the answer. Luckily I brought an umbrella and if it started raining, out it would come, and I would keep on trekking until I found a good looking lodge. All the porters along the route also carried umbrellas, so I figured I was doing the right thing.
After Junbesi I made it to Kharikhola - a 9 hour day. I think I probably climbed around 1600m and descended well over 2200 that day and when I arrived even the Nepali guides were impressed. Some "are you sure you aren't Nepali" comments were made. From Kharikhola I pushed a long day to Lukla (where all those suckers flew in), to drop off my plane ticket, some shorts, a book, and some other random things I wasn't going to need. The last two hours involved climbing straight up 550m from the river up to Lukla. The last 15 minutes I had a very friendly, very drunk Nepali following me up to my lodge. I told him no less than 15 times that tomorrow I was going to Namche. 5pm and the chang sure got to him...
The next day I made my way up to Namche, the real base of all treks into the Khumbu (Everest) region. I paid my Rs 1000 entry fee into the national park and found myself in the Khumbu Lodge for two nights (one day of acclimatization). At this point, over 8 days, I had ascended somewhere close to 9000m and descended around 7000m and made it to an altitude of 3450m.
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