As usual, I woke up early to try to catch some early morning picture. The mountains behind the monastery were illuminated by the morning sun and exactly at 6am, boy monks started clashing cymbals and blowing horns announcing that the praying was 30 minutes away.
On one side of the saddle, I could see all the way to Everest and the high peaks of the Himalayan range, while at the other I could see the valley were we would be hiking later in the day in our way to Namche.
From Tengboche, it was a long downhill to the river on a snow covered forest of rhododendrons. In the way down, we met a group of disabled hikers from South Korean. They had different kind of disabilities so one of them was being carried in a basket, while another was helped on a wheel chair, and the rest were walking on their own. They were on a two week trip to Everest Base camp and they had had 8 days on the road already.
After the nice downhill, we had a steep uphill on an extremely well maintained trail. This trail was a "highways" with lots of porters and Yaks trains going up and down. After about an hour on this trail, we reached the junction with the trail to Gokyo, so our circle was now completed.
Not so long after, we were back to Namche Bazaar and to the comforts of a modern town. We were back to have electricity, running water, hot showers (20 minutes for $3), and Internet. I caught up with email, I posted the blogs that I was able to enter in the computer before I ran out of power (in Dzongla), I had my first hot shower since we left Kathmandu, and I recharged my camera batteries ($1.25 for 1 hour). Now that we are at a "lower" elevation (and having acclimatized at higher elevations), sleeping is easier, and moving up and down the many stairs in the village is not as breathless as it was two weeks ago.
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