Trek Day 7: Gorak Shep to Deboche

View back down the trail from Gorak Shep
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Time taken: 5 hours (incl. breaks)

Distance: Today: ~18 kms            Total to date: ~60 kms

Learning what life is really like for an average person in Nepal

Altitude: Gorak Shep - 5160m, Deboche - 3770m, Descent: 1390m

Another view of the terraced farming areas on the trail
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Despite feeling ok when I went to bed, the altitude issues crept back while I was sleeping.  No fever this time, but a splitting headache and difficulties breathing in the middle of the night.  The morning was proof of how bad and how frequently AMS hits, as everyone who was in the teahouse had at least a headache.  That includes the Brits, the American guy, myself, and even Keisha (my guide) was complaining of a headache.  I think it is pretty normal to get hit by AMS, but you still have to be really careful.

The little boy that lived in our teahouse in Deboche
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I wanted to get down out of there ASAP, and didn't even feel like eating, so we set out as soon as we got up.  My will was very strong to go as far as I could today, regardless of how long it took.  Good thing we went up to Kala Pattar the pm before...

Basically we just raced down the hill that morning, getting back down to Pheriche in 2 1/2 hours (~10 km).  Even the teahouse employee that fed us when we got there was impressed.  Nothing was going to stop me from getting down from there.

The little boy that lived in our teahouse in Deboche - he was playful!
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We stopped for only 45 mins in Pheriche for breakfast, and then continued down the hill to Deboche (just a km or so shy of Tengboche).  We thought we would stop there since it is ~100m lower than Tengboche, and the lower the altitude the better at this point.  Besides, the usual trek stops in Pheriche or Pangboche the first day, so we had come an extra 5-8 kms further.  The headache was almost gone by this point, and I was regaining my strength, so it was the right decision.

Keisha (spelling?) my guide, sitting getting ready to leave Deboche
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That evening was probbly the best conversation that I had with Keisha.  We were pretty much all alone here, as the teahouse women were always in another room and not really interacting with us, and there were no other foreigners there.  We always got on quite well since he has a great sense of humour and is a genuinely nice guy, but that night was on a different level.  He opened up a lot and told me a lot of things about politics here, and what his life was like.  I seriously don't think it was a ploy to get a better tip - he was just interested and so was I.

We talked about jobs for a while, and he told me that he was considering moving to Qatar next year if the trekking business did not pick up.  I guess there are a lot of guides in the area, and given the political scene around Nepal in the past few years, the trekking business has not been booming.  The move to Qatar could potentially give him a job washing dishes or something like that, but at least it would pay more.  What he didn't mention was how hard it would be to move even further away from his family, just to support them.  His family (wife and kid ~3 years old) live up in the hills several hundred kms from Kathmandu, so he rarely sees them now.  The flight to Qatar is quite expensive, so I imagine that it would be years between visits...  I can't imagine living like that.  Very interesting conversation, especially to dig deeper on what life is like in Nepal, even in the big city.

Both of us decided to hit the sack early since we were both still recovering from lack of sleep the night before, so off to bed ~9 pm that night.