Next on our itinerary for exploration and discovery is to put Pangboche behind us and to aim for the next camp in Pheriche. Actually, in hindsight we can say that we didn’t really leave everything from Pangboche behind because some of us picked up a little bug in the digestive track and each of us spent a few days of our own high level, internal diplomatic talks with the bacteria negotiating territorial ownership. Richard was hit hardest, and we traced the cause back to the holy water from Mt. Kailash that we all drank. There was a lot more positive than negative that we brought with us, so we were invigorated to progress on our journey. Remember what I said about the landscape at Phortse starting seem a little different. Well, as we hiked along the river valley norteast, parallel to the Imja Khola, we were straddling the tree line, and we were clearly passing into a different ecological system. Apparently we were wandering into fringes of the realm of aged, jagged boulders with colorful colonies of lichen. We were finding the landscape a bit drab as our eyes were adjusting to the new, subdued range of colors, with the rich green of the trees washing away into faded, dry grass.

Let’s not move on from Pangboche just yet, there’s a little bit of history to uncover for the village. Our source for background information and creative story telling is Pema Dorje again. This village is one of the most significant places for him in the region and he makes a point of visiting the Lama Gyeshi often for counsel in making decisions and receiving blessings in carrying out his somewhat risky line of work as a trekking guide. Pema explained to me that Pangboche is one of the oldest Sherpa villages in the Khumbu region, so it has hundreds of years of history. I’ll have to check some more detailed accounts of the Sherpa history to verify whether Pema means Pangboche is the first Sherpa village of what is now eastern Nepal, or if the fact is that the original Tibetan settlers first founded other villages to the east or the west from Solu Khumbu. Regardless, Pangboche has a heritage reaching far back in the history of the region, so there was time to develop some interesting stories, fact or myth as yet undetermined.