The town of Namche Bazaar nestles into what appears to be an old glacial head (a half-bowl just below the mountain peaks); a collection of multi-coloured roofs dotting the hillside. Unfortunately I did not get much of a chance to explore yesterday though since I was pretty poorly. It started out with tummy pains, and developed into a nasty fever in the early afternoon – shivering at altitude is not fun I discovered since you hyperventilate and start losing feeling in extremities! I spent the afternoon and evening in bed feeling utterly miserable, but thankfully it was pretty short lived and by the following morning the fever had passed.
Namche Bazaar
I did manage to observe one thing though; we were woken in the morning by a chipping sound. What was causing it was the locals hand-chipping locally quarried rock into the bricks that make up all the buildings. The precision with which they make the blocks and the buildings is quite amazing though – every block perfectly sitting with its neighbor with almost no mortar (if any at all in some of the buildings). Also, all the stone is quarried locally and carted around partly on the backs of those incredible porters (see below)! OK, being geeky about low-tech building methods, will shush now!
Uber-porters carrying massive blocks of granite to be broken and carved into bricks
A sample of the perfectly engineered walls
