I don’t know which piece of good news to share with your first. I guess I’ll postpone some of my self-promotion and give you an update on our good friend Pema. He keeps himself busy from fall to spring hiking the steep Khumbu trails of his home neighborhood in Nepal and tends to maintaining his prosperous lodges. You can be sure that he gets quite enthused when summer comes along and the heavy monsoon rain make his trekking business impractical. He absolutely loves getting out and traveling the world in the summers, as he has been doing for many years. He has made so many friends across the far corners of the globe that it takes him all summer to dash around and drop in for quick visits. For now he’s in the eastern United States, and by the end of the summer he’ll whip through here on his way to California. I suggested that either he has too many friends to visit or he should find more excuses to get away from Nepal.

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.

Pheriche is where we started to get serious about dealing with the effects of the altitude. At 14,000 feet and above the effects were no longer a myth for us. I, for one, had a terrible night with a splitting headache, and after an unbearable wait until morning I raided Gaye’s stash of ibuprofin and diamox pills. There is, of course, the a clinic in Pheriche devoted to treating and educating hikers regarding headaches and acclimatization. I got some very informative background information on high altitude headaches from Dr. Lipmen, who was leading a pharmaceutical trial up there. We also met Christina, who was actually on her way down from Lobuche and Kala Patar, but actually, even further “up the trail.” She’s from Georgia, but she had spent the summer in sourthern China at the Utahloy International School, which is in Zengcheng, near Hong Kong.

It’s a foregone conclusion that our trail beyond this point will involve the usual toil and struggle, but after more than a week of conditioning the recurring rise and fall is actually alright for the legs. Just as always, it is the psychological challenge that can make our hike any trouble. So I won’t mention anything about trails and feeling tired, at least until we get to the dreaded village of Lobuche, which gives me about another week in this blog to colorfully describe the villages and flowers and puffy clouds until then. You don’t think I can wander off metaphorically for a few days and fixate on lumbering grey swirls of vapor roiling down to stifle the rumbling chatter of the river valley? Don’t tempt me, or you’ll have to read about puffy clouds all next week. The sight of spry, diminutive yet colorful patches of wildflowers cheering up the thinning, dead grass is still vivid in my mind. As a matter of fact, on a few of our casual conditioning day hikes I stopped, catching my breath, to pluck samples of the yellow, red and lavender wild blossoms to press and preserve in my Nepal tourist book. Saying that, I’m calling my masculinity into question, so I won’t mention what I was thinking about butterflies and unicorns.