Next stop Tengboche

We set out (reluctantly) the next day into sunshine and warmth. The morning goes well, mostly flat land trekking through woods and open farm land. We stop for lunch and see David and Steph at the restaurant right beside us. Everywhere we stop for lunch, I'm always looking for a place to wash our hands. There's usually a plastic water barrel with a spout and pail somewhere outside the restaurant but this time, nada. When I ask, the restaurant owner invites me inside her kitchen to wash up. I notice her children sitting on the dirt floor preparing vegetables ( I had just ordered vegetable noodle soup) and the room is so dark I hardly see anything. I'm wondering if I really want to seem them preparing our meals.

We eat our lunch outside while Karma chats with some monks sitting at the next table. I keep looking at the forward trail that we are going to be travelling on soon. There are many stone steps going up, up, up. Our lunch arrives—Rara veg noodle soup. We asked Karma what rara was but he was unlcear (sometimes there is a bit of a language barrier). Once the soup arrived it looks to me like “rara” means “Ramen”. At one point I look across to the table beside us and a man has his boost and socks off, bare feet up on the table. Some tourists are just plain rude and disgusting.

There's a grey horse that wanders down the path and pokes it's head into the doorway of our "restaurant". It's rewarded with a bucket of food, probably table scarps from the patrons.
 

After lunch we start our upward trek that pretty much doesn't end for the next 2-3 hours. My god what are we doing!!!

During the trekking, a lot of times we tend to leap frog the same groups of trekkers. There's a group of girls and their leader from Australia. I think they are raising money for some sort of charity. The first time we met on the trail one of them yells out “Go Canada” as they walked by. There's also a group of three men from India. One, who is a lawyer, is having difficult time like us so we often meet him while one of us is paused on the trail catching our breath. This is his second time doing the Everest base camp trek. He claims it is addictive (Right!) He also tells us that he doesn't rely on Diamox for these treks but trusts in garlic...so he eats a lot of garlic soup.

We finally arrive in Tenboche and get checked into our room.We notice the toilets and the “hot shower” are both outside in the courtyard. There is also no power outlets in the room (which we think will be the same for the remaining trek up. Tenboche claims to have the “highest monastery in the world". The monks invite the public in to hear their prayers and chanting everyday at 4pm and 6am. Since we arrive around 3pm we wonder around taking pictures only to find that monks had started early (or we had the time wrong). Disappointed we head off to the bakery for “real” coffee, apple crumble and dutch apple cake at the bakery. It was delicious.

We end the day with Sherpa stew and a good night's sleep.