It’s been a long and somewhat demoralising day, I went to bed last night at 8pm and rose to a glorious morning at 6.15am. I opened the tent to the sight of sunlight slowly engulfing Mera Peak in a wonderful warm golden light that only occurs for that short period in the early morning and as the sun sets.

I can hear you saying, ‘what’s so demoralising about that’. Absolutely nothing, it’s the very reason I love this area so much…..but today has been a day of sitting and waiting for four more porters to arrive from Lukla. Reading a book, drinking tea, having a wonder, reading a book, having a snooze, drinking tea, you get my drift. We should have pushed on towards Mera Peak but I believe Tshering has had a few issues with the extra porters required for the climbing part of the expedition. Three were here waiting when we arrived yesterday, but the other four were still a day away and they are carrying climbing equipment for both Chandana and one of the Sherpas. Doing nothing for an hour or two is heaven, but all day is exhausting and down right boring.

There is still the issue of Tshering not having yet joined the expedition, I’ve tried to speak to him directly as I know that the other Sherpas are telling me what they think I want to hear, which I am finding extremely frustrating . The new Sherpa that arrived this morning speaks far better English than the other Sherpa and Cook. So I have some insight into what the issues are but he still insists that I speak to Tshering directly and communication here is little bit hit and miss and depends very much on the weather. There appears to be two problems, one, Tshering is struggling to get the necessary climbing permit for Baruntse and secondly he has some sort of ‘public’ issue. Like you, I have no idea what a ‘public’ issue is until I can speak to him. So as you can probably tell I’m a little frustrated. I managed to speak to Carolynn today, seems that Lutterworth is easier to contact that Kathmandu, and she is going to email and leave him a private message on Facebook to try and clear up the situation.

You’re saying ‘you have two climbing Sherpas already with you, so what difference does it make?’. Climbing is a partnership, one built on trust and it’s that trust that I have built up with Tshering that brings me back with him to the Himalaya as my climbing guide and partner. To suddenly find that he might not be joining the expedition does nothing for my confidence in both the climb and expedition!

Anyway, enough moaning. Back to Nepali Flat. The two days before this enforced rest day, were best described as ‘brutal’ to say the least. Brutal in two ways, firstly we did that unforgivable thing while walking, we lost height in the morning only to gain it plus some in the afternoon, on both days and secondly, on each day we could see where we started from! Very disheartening as we had been on the trial for six or seven hours each day. I believe now that it’s mainly up as we slowly gain height towards Mera Peak.