The lovely feel of a fresh pair of jocks and socks adorned my skin as we set off for another day's walking. Immodium mixed cement in my stomach as Kirt described the day's walk as 'tough'. This adjective bounced around my head as my chewed my way through the dry grey yoke of an over-boiled egg, as not only had Kirt taken on the unkempt look of a Nepali, but had also picked up their habit of massively understating distances, times, and difficulty.
What then caught my attention was Jen saying she couldn’t drink her water just yet as she hadn't waited the 30 minutes for the steriliser's to kick in. This concerned me. I had just been dropping in my tablets and drinking straight away. Upon further inspection of the instructions, you are indeed instructed to wait 30 minutes before the steriliser’s take effect. What further concerned me was Cuzzer's previous statement that this year had been a bad year for Giardia. Giardia is the bacterial offshoot of faeces. All water on the mountain is taken from glacial streams. This would have to be the purest form of water in the world, were it not for the animal and human faeces travelling through it. Giardia, in short, is bad news. It results in horrible vomiting and diarrhoea as your body tries to eradicate the bug as quickly as possible. This is generally uncontrollable and not easily maintained or gotten over. As my stomach was getting progressively worse, and as I had been drinking unsterilised water for 4 days, I began to think - with a fair degree of certainty - that it probably wasn't the change of diet that had caused my stomach to fall out of me with alarming regularity, but more to do with a horrible infectious bug that was going to take a long time to eradicate.
The first 2 hours were spent going downhill, which isn't as easy as it sounds. The impact of 16kgs on your back sends shockwaves through the joints. I was almost looking forward to the uphill section. To pass the time, I got to know our medics Nick and Breck a bit better with 2 hours of solid chat, interspersed by listening to Kirt's chat on the radio explaining the difference between jam and marmalade. I knew I'd get along fine with Nick Walker when he radioed through to the group behind that a big pack of Yaks were causing a disturbance, not through indifference to their master, but because I'd raped one of them.
After grassing Butler up over his failure to well the Dick of the Day bell (see: 'ww2' comment from Day 5), we commenced the uphill slog of 600 metres. Essentially you can repeat the uphill slog from Day 2, but just add in some pretty good chat between Chris, Hillsy, Breck, and to a lesser extent (thank you for that evaluation Chris) myself. On the way up, some American girls stopped us. Without a hint of irony, they launched into a full description of how we were wasting our time even attempting the game. They thought that after one ball we'd collapse, that we would be playing in blizzards, and that we were stupid to even think we could do this. So caught up in their own importance and struggles at GorakShep, they ignored me thanking them for the Alex Ferguson style motivational talk (my exact words) and walked on.
Nicks Valuable Trekking Tip: Always open your pack of wine gums away from the crowd of people.
Slopping into Tengboche around mid-afternoon, I was greeted by Mike Preston. 'Tooves you're rooming with me mate... but I'm afraid to say we've got a pretty ordinary view from our window' - A quick draw of the curtains revealed the first proper view of Mt Everest for the trip. Walking outside, I had a bit of a moment as I gazed up. I'll spare you the boring details for fear of sounding like a travel-wanker (‘you only know the feeling if you've been there’ etc etc... the sort of thing a surfer would bore you to tears with), but I stood and stared with smile on my face for a good 20 minutes as the others in our group filed up the mountain.
Watching everybody come in, I did think to myself that, yet again, I was at the front of the pack and doing pretty well with the whole walking-at-altitude thing. Until I found out that, before I'd got there, Mike Preston had found time to get himself a room, head to the bakery for a snack, and do a load of washing. With promises of good food from the bakery, we sat inside and played cards whilst the Kirtley's fell asleep in their chairs. Having been in shared accommodation for 6 days plus, the twitches on Joe, Cuzza, Chris, and myself were evident as we played with an FHM pack of cards.
An afternoon of playing knockabout cricket in front of the monastery ensued... highlights including having to run a 7 after hitting it down the hill, Dharma's spectacular one-hander in the outfield, Butler's child-like petulance when he learnt that he couldn't just bat whenever he wanted too, and some pretty amusing sledging of Dave Kirtley. I was quite proud of my 'Couldn't we afford the good Kirtley?', however Butler's 'Don't worry, I'm not the best player in my family either' probably trumped it.
Tengboche, at 3900m, started to see the facilities get a little more basic. There was no power until 6pm, outside toilets, and it was much colder. That night we sat down to our normal meal of garlic soup, friend bread, and spuds to listen to a pretty serious talk from the medics about the coming days. They'd spoken with a Danish guy with extensive mountaineering experience, whom was properly acclimatised, but still came down with HACE, a very serious form of altitude sickness involving swelling of the brain. Further to this, two Japanese trekkers had very recently died. Whilst the Japanese have a genetic makeup meaning their bodies are more susceptible to the affects of Altitude sickness, the message was plain and clear. Take it slow, drink at least 4 litres of water and eat plenty.
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