Yesterday we walked up to a village called Tangnag. On the the way up, who should we meet….our trail breakers, the only trouble is, they were on there way down! It had taken them ten hours to break the trail up to Tangnag from Kharka and on reaching the Tangnag village, found that is was locked up and deserted, not yet open for the season. The porters staged a revolt as they didn’t have their own sleeping bags, but most importantly they had no shelter! So they have retreated. It was a group of three people from the UK, goodness me was it good to speak to someone. I asked if they minded if I kept them talking for two or three hours as I hadn’t spoken any serious English for nearly two and a half weeks (except the odd phone call to Carolynn). They told me that out of the seven groups that were at Lukla a few days ago intending to go to Mera Peak only themselves and another group (this group retreated before we got onto the main trail) decided to have a crack, the other five groups decided to head for Everest Base Camp instead, due to the unusual amount of snow fall. Other groups from the UK wanting to do Mera Peak, apparently, were told not even to bother coming out to Nepal!!! (Unverified).

So here we are at Tangnag , the only group still heading for Mera Peak. We are having a rest day, while the climbing Sherpas break the trail, ready for tomorrow. The weather, I must say is quite tropical….when the sun’s out, so a very pleasant day to take in our surroundings and take just a FEW photographs.

I can hear you asking has Tshering flown in today, as I was assured he would be. In fact to make it worse Chandanu’s high altitude boots that Tshering provided are too small, so a Sherpa has retreated to Khara to call him to bring the correct size…..does that mean that they knew all along he wasn’t arriving today, I’ll let you be the judge…or am I being just a little cynical?? I’m still very much hoping that he will join us soon, as over the past six years he has provided an excellent service for me as a client and I like to think also as s friend.