Ah Namche, you beautiful thing. The Holy Grail of all returning Everest trekkers and unknown last comfortable outpost for the uninitiated ones, you provide hot showers, cheap wonderful yak steak and warm rooms to cheer us before our respective journeys onwards. And lastly, tonight you provide us in particular with one very special and overdue thing: a lie-in!
Namche was our destination after an early start when unusually we were ready on time. We ploughed on determined to get the hot showers we so needed after 10 days of dirt and sweat. Even the steepening 200m incline that seemed almost vertical only took us 45 mins to complete. We said goodbye to the mountains as we wound down to Namche and charged batteries, "borrowed" a bit more wireless Internet, and finally got some meat in our diet with two yak steaks each. I'm almost certain I know what's on our lunch menu before we leave for Phakding tomorrow!
One slightly annoying bit of news is that my flight to Beijing has been cancelled. I'm in the process of having it rearranged and I'll find out tomorrow what my new plans are. Hopefully not too different. We'll see...