Day 10: Rest day at Yak Kharkaa

10.13.08

Yak Kharkha
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Our friends decided to press on to high camp while Alex and I decide to take an extra rest day. I haven't had a rest day and I can feel myself running low on energy. A day of nothing sounds most excellent. We stayed at a simple, small place. It is not as fancy as the hotel we see a little further, but family owned, clean and it seems to have everything we need. The guy lives in Manang with his wife and comes here to run the place during the season with the help of a young Gurkha boy.

We have probably the best tea of the trek here: real loose leaf jasmine tea. The veg fried rice is also really good. He heats up water on the stove for our showers. I also asked him for a little extra for doing my laundry.

So here we are, sitting outside in the sun washing our clothes, just like our host was about half hour ago. I think that's when he started liking us. Then we really enjoyed flossing, brushing and thoroughly cleaning our teeth. Alex was out exploring while I enjoyed sleeping in the sun all afternoon. For dinner we had enormous portions of daal, bhat which was quite good. The dining room was cold so we joined our host in the kitchen; sat by the fire - a bit like a village in Punjab. There was a dutch guy coming from Bengal - he was a bit strange. We also met a Czech guy - a serious mountaineer. He was soft spoken seemed very nice but spoke limited English. He had just come from a Manaslu expedition - had a beard and a winder burned face.