Phakding to Namche Bazaar

The morning portion of our second day of walking was fairly easy, but it was a completely different story after lunch - a constant slog up the hill for about two hours which had us seriously out of breath after each zig and zag. At least we were eventually finally rewarded with our first view of Everest, and when we saw the first signs saying 'Namche Bazaar' we breathed a sigh of relief.

Finally reached Namche Bazaar

Prematurely though, as it turned out there was yet another 130m of punishing climbing through the steep steps of the town before finally reaching our stop for the night - Moonlight Lodge. The last 50m were probably the hardest and even once we were in the hostel, even climbing two flights of stairs to get from the entrance to our rooms was nearly all too much.

Hard to get a better town view than this

Fortunately we were able to rest for the rest of the day and amused ourselves with a retro Monopoly set which was available in the common area.

The common area in Moonlight Lodge

The next morning we were all to happy to have a rest day, apart from a short trudge up the hill to visit the local museum, take some more photos of Everest, and a visit to the town proper which we pretty much ignored the day before in our efforts to just get the walking over and done with.

Shops in Namche

As promised, Namche has everything a trekker needs, from official North Face outlets (accordingly priced), to Irish Pubs, it was by far the most developed settlement we came across in the entire walk. Plenty of souvenir shops abounded as well, with the usual knitted animal hats and yak wool scarves. Prices varied greatly from store to store and we mostly refrained from purchasing anything. No doubt the find of the day were Snickers Crunchers, a favourite of James' and not commonly seen anymore elsewhere.

Probably one of the best things about the whole trek were the consistently amazing views we'd get from whatever place we were staying at, and usually from our rooms themselves too - something which definitely helped us get over the freezing cold temperatures!

The view from our room in the morning