If we’re out camping in the wilderness and going without washing for weeks at a time then we’re rugged enough to wake up and get started a little bit early for our hike to the top of Kala Patthar. Our guide Pema knows well enough that a whole trek could be ruined by delaying the start just a few hours on the day of the final ascent. Although you could say that the journey is the destination, most of Pema’s clients hired him to actually get to the top of a mountain and get pictures of themselves as proof of the efforts. Add to that the costs of travel and taking time off from their jobs, and the price puts pressure on reaching the objective. The M.O. of the weather patterns up in the Himalayas is to offer clear skies in the early morning through noon, then in the after noon the tufts of condensed water vapor begin to rise up out of the valleys and they bunch up against the slopes.

Thokla is like any dusty frontier outpost you would see in an old cowboy movie, with one rocky path winding between the one drafty outhouse and the heaps of wood and tin making up the structures. Being so far from the administrative control center of the country, even from anyone carrying any sort of official title, we felt like we were free to make our own destiny, but exposed to the dangers of lawlessness lurking in the shadows. Who would do such a thing as cause trouble in this community though? From what I saw the Sherpa people really didn’t get into much trouble, and the hikers were all amiable and considerate for others’ well-being. The yaks sure didn’t get out of hand, as long as there was some dried out grass stubble within reach of their sweeping tongues. The only time our yaks got a little bit stimulated was when our junior member Tashi hopped onto one of them and started kicking and yammering like a wildcat.

An hour or two north beyond the chorten, the memorials to the mountaineers killed on Mt. Everest, is the small break in the path known as Thokla village. This insignificant waypoint on the map was actually quite memorable for us, first with the remarkable view. This sparse collection of two or three tin huts is latched at 15,200 feet onto the side of a steep, rocky slope overlooking an eroded glacier valley, and set at the base of the massive Kongma mountain. This is definitely on the main trail to Mt. Everest, and it is a logical point for making camp since it’s still a bit of work getting on to Lobuche. So there we were, feeling like we had pushed beyond reality and the extent of our imagination after what we had seen starting in Pheriche. There are times when you feel like you must have seen it all, so nothing else phases you, and so as we were making strange new encounters in this land beyond the beyond we no longer had any mental alarms going off.

Trekking along the Dudh Kosi valley in the Khumbu region of Nepal takes you past a number of small villages that barely make a mark on the map but are home to the kind and caring locals. They make time between caring for the family and their fields to make some comforts for the stream of hiker passing by their front doors. Each of the villages on the main hiking route have little snack shops and certainly there will be one or two tea houses, basically the family’s dining room opened up for business. The path beyond Lukla is very special for hikers because either it is their first encounter with the lush foliage and the magnificent river valley, or on their way down from a long trek they become sentimental for their time in the mountains and they look forward to the flight out to the comforts of the big city.