So we"ve been in Namche Bazaar for the past day and a half. Namche is one of the larger villages in the Everest region and sits at about 11,000 ft. We spent most of the day yesterday just resting from our long trek in. Took a nice hot shower and slept to help let my body recover.
Today we did an acclimatization hike up to a small village called Kunde where Edmund Hillary built one of the famous hospitals in the region. We ate lunch at Ang Nima Sherpa"s home - had some wicked garlic soup, egg fried rice, and then a few glasses of Chang (the local rice beer which is known to make you dizzy, which it subsequently did, hehe).
We then trekked to the neighboring village, Kungjung, where Hillary"s famous Sherpa school resides (he built it 50 years ago).
We really got the Sherpa lifestyle experience today. The villages we visited today were the original villages where Sherpa"s were from. We saw them planting potatoes, Sherpa kids throwing yak poop at each other, met some of our climbing Sherpas, got necklaces blessed by a Lama (not the Dalai Lama, but some Lama)....oh and we got our first (well, second really) view of Everest. So amazing! It had a huge snow plume coming off if it due to the 100mph winds that are currently hitting the summit.
Tomorrow we have a big trekking day to Tengboche Monastery to get blessed, and then on to Pangboche for the night.