Happy Holidays! and indulge me one more time to say how thankful I am for the great experiences I had this year and the fun I have had writing about them in this blog. Ok, indulging over. This is the time of year when we come together and share our sincerest pneumonia and head colds with our close family and friends. I was on my way for travel plans to visit my parents in Washington earlier this week, but as I couldn’t manage more than lumbering to the bathroom for some nausea, I was grounded and wiped out until now. It was refreshing news to get an email from Pema this morning from Kathmandu. We’ve been a little concerned since we hadn’t gotten a reply since we left from out trekking trip to Nepal at the end of October, but he says he’s been busy high up in the Khumbu working on his lodge.

He tells me he has been working hard to build up his second lodge, located high on the slope overlooking Phortse and the steep river valley below. We stayed at that lodge for at least a couple of days and enjoyed being indoors with a nice dining room and stove. Pema spent 40 days up there, no doubt directing work crews to build the rock walls and fill in the concrete, as well as filling in the aesthetic details with his own style. Pema’s vision for his franchise expansion has been a little bit up in the air for a few years now. He’s been slowly working on that plot of land left to him by his father and building up a lodge one block of stone at a time. It sounds like he has been finalizing the construction and he even decided on a name. We offered a number of suggestions for and weighed in what he had in mind.

An obvious choice would have been “Gomba Lodge II” (as in the sequel to his lodge down up and and around the bend in Khumjung). Another friend of his recommended “Dew Drop Inn”, which is very catchy and even mystical. But Richard had monetization foremost on his mind and really pushed the name “SherpaTek.com Lodge” (yes, dot-com) to drive up page clicks and tie ins with this website. Well, I do agree that the demographic of Himalaya trekkers is the type who will read up online before strapping on their daypack and hiking poles. Pema obviously didn’t feel the same (it was more like indigestion by the look on his face). So after this time of deep seclusion, reflection, and time without obtuse suggestions he landed on the name “Peaceful Lodge”, and so it is going to be on the sign he has commissioned. I wonder if he’s still up for the idea of flashing neon that we suggested.