The mountains continued to be quite populated though, with tiny communities strung out along the mountain path. There is such a striking contrast up here compared to Kathmandu; there is no evidence of a class split, in fact no evidence of poverty. Instead the people seem happy and well fed, the children are well clothed and we saw at least two schools, one attached to a monastery. The locals are living totally in harmony with nature, taking what they need in terms of food, fuel and building materials from the local land, electricity from local micro-hydro projects (eg. 70KW) and they seem to have a much better quality of life for it compared with their city-dwelling brethren. Unfortunately, I suspect that the encroachment of Western culture is partly to blame for people moving into the city and in most cases suffering a great reduction in quality of life.

Shortly before lunch we entered the Sargamatha (Mt. Everest) national park. We came through an ornate entry way to be greeted with the most stunning view to date (see below). Down the path to the river the hillside was adorned with yet more of the massive boulders engraved with prayers (in pic). Similar boulders were in every little village along the route, and they are not just painted – the white bits are the the original surface of the rock and the black areas have been relived (carved) to a depth of about half an inch.

After lunch we faced a much more serious challenge – a 500m climb up the Namche hill. This was considerably less enjoyable and seriously hard work, but when we finally arrived in Namche Bazaar we felt fantastic and it was quite an achievement to do it in only 3 hours.