My mind must have been drifting (vacant) after lunch. After hiking for awhile all of a sudden I recognized we were walking down into Namche Bazaar. Namche, sooooo glad to see you. We got our room assignments, and the smart climbers shot into their bathrooms for the first decent showers in about a week and a half. In fact, since we left Namche the first time.

Everyone split up with some going into town, others chilling at the tea house (my favorite option). No more shopping needed…I already had a yak bell.

Yeti-like creature stalked us for days:

Smiley girl. Something about her doesn’t look quite right:

We stopped for lunch at a little place situated at a little pass. Looking back at the pictures it seems to have been called Mong La (or just Mong from the map). Moods were improving even though the terrain was steep up and down. But then again it’s the Himalayas, not New Jersey.

Sara would have liked the organic food place. We went somewhere else a little farther down the trail, though. At lunch I celebrated and bought a Fanta for a few hundred rupees. Took me back to my O.G. days.

On the edge of recovery, but not there yet. Still at almost 14,000′ I was exhausted, my lungs were making bad noises, and I hadn’t slept more than an hour straight in a week. Still, the days were full of amazing sights and we just ran on adrenaline.

I believe that Phortse is off the beaten path. Most trekkers return to Namche the way they came. Again, Deana knew the woman who ran the place and I’m so glad we stopped there and saw something different. The views from the trail were remarkable (that’s a new word. I’m tired of spectacular).

It was my worst night. I wasn’t sure I was going to wake up so I didn’t want to go to sleep in the last hour. Not that I had slept before that. So of course, I fell asleep and it was the one morning when nobody knocked and woke me up with ‘milk tea pleeze’ so I was a half hour late to breakfast and had to rush to get packed.

But as usual the sun was shining when we woke up, I wasn’t dead, and the only good way to get to Namche was to shoulder the pack and start walking. If I’d been at home I wouldn’t have moved from bed. But I was still in the middle of nowhere in Nepal so it wasn’t worth thinking about.

The world was turning green again.