Finally got into the treeline ...so good to see trees and be warmer and have softer lips(poor things got hammered in the minus temps..)
We stopped just before the bridge before Debuche to have a quick snack from our bags. Kept on running into people we'd met over the past 10 days. You may not trek together or even know each others names. But everytime you bump into each other, its the only familiar thing in this unfamiliar place:)
Walk from Debuche to Tengboche was beautiful BUT up , up and up. What took us 10 mins to get down earlier took me most of the hour to get up. Finally reached Tengboche around 10-30-11. Village was crowded. A little boy was sitting outside the monastery selling chocolates, some knick knacks and BEER. We were just looking at his wares when a young monk from the monastery comes running out and buys a beer and goes back in. Don't mean to be judgemental but they're MONKS for God's sake! Mani Rimdu, the Tibetan festival is on in full swing.
We are lucky ones who get to witness this. Apparently Tengboche is only one of the few places this festival is celebrated in Nepal( and the world). We entered the temple, payed 500 NR per head that was being collected from every tourist. We decided to stay for an hour and max till 1 pm and then continue our descent. But we were in the middle of the only Tibetan fest in Nepal being held and eventually we were hooked. 1 pm- went to get something to eat for Adam.We gave ourselves a further extended time till 3 pm. We may not reach Namche, but we would atleast go as far as possible and halt at some lodge. Well finally we just went got ourselves a room in the lodge opposite the monastery, dumped our bags and stayed..
There was this standup comedy acts -where they were targetting tourists mainly-everytime they passed us we were like sheeeet....we didnt understand the language but were laughing our asses off...
They kept on serving food and chips and biscuits and beverages. Once they gave us a disposable plate and came around with a vat of rice. I thought it was kheer ( Indian rice and milk sweet dish) and took a good helping. But my mouth twisted when i had the first bite. It was rice mixed with the sourest of buttermilk i'd ever tasted. I don't know how I gulped that down. I suppose being hungry and tired helps. Crackers were nice and greasy. The best of course was the hot sweet local tea. Warmed our insides in the cold. I lost one of my gloves in the festival and never found it back. Well , doesn't matter- I was on the way down now..... The festivities ended around 6 . Went to the lodge and ordered my food. There was a huge crowd in there, mostly old folks. Spoke to the ladies. Turns out they organise treks for 60+ Americans every year and this was their first trip to EBC and Nepal. Bravo...pretty inspiring I must say:).. Then at night there was like a sherpa party all night long at the monastery-old folks mostly singing and dancing...and it was collddd-like minus 20 or so- water in our bottle freezing and all that... The younger people stayed a bit, didn't dance and then sneaked out...looks like this is all the liveliness this party was going to get...hmmph....
My trekmate, me and 2 American guys were the only foreigners there. They started handing around drinks which we first thought as the really needed hot tea..but turns out was local alcoholic beverage called chang-which is again sour buttermilk taste and served hot...gnnaaahhh...Well we didn't get sloshed..and certainly didn't take anymore helpings of it but it certainly warmed us and gave us some bravado to get up there and join the dance-we were so horrible in getting the steps right:).. but was still super - i still had to pulled away from the monastery coz it was freezing cold:). This was the latest we'd slept- 11.30 pm ( Usually dinner by 6 an bed latest by 9 pm)
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