Till today we had the best of weathers and best of views but there was still a lot to travel and climb. My last experience with the weather in the Himalayas was not all that good so I was the first to put all my prayers loud enough. :). Arun to lead the group, only change was Alex and his son Gaddi were going to go fast as they were going to climb all the way to Gorak Shep instead of Lobuche. The trails to Dughla wlkas on the edge of the plateau and over looks the Pheriche valley and the village of Pheriche some 200m into the valley. You can actually spot trains of trekkers climbing up from the valley to meet us at Dughla. The biggest difference is the effort they put in, we climb 200m from Dingboche on a flat leveled trail and the Pheriche guys 400m. On the walk we saw a chopper landing in Pheriche, may be the medical supplies had arrived.

There is small settlement after an hours walk from Dingboche it might be the village of Dusa as per the map. There are around 5-6 stone huts and pasture lands marked with stone walls but no one stayed there. We tooka a brief water stop here and regrouped. After the trail climbs a bit and then you start to look at the blue colored roofs and the drop to the 2-3 hotel settlement of Dughla. Whatever climbs up will climb down and up again. Once you see the Dughla hotels you also see the trail that climbs to the sherpa memorials above the Dughla hill. You also see that the guys from Pheriche are already exhausted on the climb and they don't see whats next..  :) how mean I am...

At Dughla we had a round of Lemon tea I remember I had 3 cups of it and almost 200gms of ground nut chikki, and a snicker bar. All set for a hard toil up to the chortens. The climb is muddy and always windy. When you reach the pass the winds are too strong, the prayer flags on the memorials fly high. We salute the will and determination of the sherpas that gave there lives to climb the Top of the world. There is a chorten of the famous Babu cheri sherpa and many more. Its like all these guys want to bless on our way to the base camp. We spent some time here, actually we had to, after the sweaty climb the cold wind made us wear our wind breakers and hoods, "WELCOME TO HIGH ALTITUDE".  After a quick round of water I started towards a descending trail to Lobuche which flattened later. The view from this point changes the way you look into the kumbhu gorge. You are actually standing at the mouth of the kumbhu galcier, and I am sure 100 years ago the glacier must be till lobuche even further. For the first time you see a dound valley or a terminating valley. The wall of mountains that stops your vision is the border of Nepal, this wall is made up of Pumori, Lingtren, Kumhutse, Nuptse, the mighty everest is hidden behind Nuptse. We are so close to it but still you cant see it. Actually kala patthar is just 5hrs walk from this place with plenty of oxygen its even lesser. If this would have been Shayadris we would have reached Gorak shep in 2 hrs flat. But this is not Maharashtra, its 4910m and we are at 60% oxygen levels so "wake Om wake up" Kala patthar is still a day's walk for you.

We shared the hotel with an Iranian group of 8 I guess, they were really strong fellas all retired army guys and they were singing and dancing we joined them in there show and had gala of time. One of the guys in the group was on crutches and he had walked all the way here on them. We all felt proud of him and I was stunned to know that, one hell of strong will. We were joined later almost at tea break by a cezh couple they were very quite or may be over shadowed by the noise we were already generating. It was really cold in here, every 100 m the strength of cold increased, we urged Tenzing to lit the stove at around 4PM but rules are rules the stove started at 5PM. We were playing poker and Girish came in with a new game which he called "108" but its similar to Uno played with more relaxed rules than uno. We passed that evening playing 108 and ordered dinner around 730Pm. Pradyumna was feeling ok and his headache was almost gone, he probably settled for the altitude or his food poison was gone. He had simple porridge for dinner which I thought was a better idea. We were able to cook our own soup till date but Tenzing was more strict and he did not allow us to cook in his kitchen. We had to skip soup that night. Actually when you book into a hotel you are supposed to eat everything there and no outside food items are allowed but because we used to buy hot water for the soup from them they were allowing us to break the rule, not happening in Lobuche, I told you its not a good village :).

As a routine, we had some warm discussion on next days POA and we hit bed around 930PM. Many of us had plans to go to base camp tomorrow and kala patthar the following day. I never wanted to go to base camp so I decided to climb kala patthar the next day after reaching gorak shep. Pravin,sudhir and Dr. Jigjinni were of the same idea. Raja with a twisted ankle was also considering our idea.

Next Day