Dingboche and Pheriche
After Phortse, we headed to Dingboche. Here is a view looking back at Phortse. If you click the first thumbnail you will zoom to some of the many potato fields. The second shows a toilet tent–not ours. We stayed at a lodge in the village below and did not use a portable toilet the whole trip. The third thumbnail shows Stephen and Sonan. Click the fourth to zoom to the trail on the other side of the river we took the day before to reach Phortse. The stupa at the entrance to the village as one climbs to the top of the trail from the river can be seen if you click the fifth thumbnail. Around and below this stupa I was able to get some marginal photos of danphe and musk deer in the late evening and very early morning dusk.
That afternoon we reached Dingboche in the valley of the river flowing from Ama Dablam and Island Peak (Imja Tse). It is a fairly desolate town of stone walls and potato fields. But it is slightly less dusty and windy than its neighbor over the ridge, Pheriche, where the wind roars up the valley and the sun comes late and leaves early because of the surrounding mountain.
A predawn solo hike to a stupa above Dingboche yielded this spectacular 360 degree vista.
After this hike I found some rare hot water before breakfast, washed two handkerchiefs, and hung them on a line outside. When I checked on them about 10 minutes later they were frozen solid.
That day we reached our highest altitude (15,500 ft) of the trek when we climbed above Dingboche. Here we are heading back down toward Dingboche. We stayed in two lodges in Dingboche; they are both in the far right of this image. You can zoom in on them. The one to the left of the pair was the nicest. It had four solar ovens in the front yard. The stupa above these two lodges in the same one as in the previous photo–the large round object on the left of the image.
We were stopped a bit short of our goal by nagging GI attacks with some of us hit much harder than others. I suffered relatively minimally, and none of us showed signs of altitude sickness. The next day we hiked to nearby Pheriche which featured a barren landscape, the wonderful White Yak Mountain Hut managed by a woman from France, and a clinic staffed by young western volunteer physicians.
Several clinic visits, some forced rehydration for one of us, and some Cipro for several of us (including me) got us ready for further trekking. So after two nights in Pheriche we started back toward Namche and Lukla, but by a different route, in part. Here we are leaving Pheriche.
A ways down the trail the landscape was still desolate but also spectacular.
