February - March 1999 

Note:  clicking on any photograph will present a larger version.
	Tengboche Monastery.  After lunch, we flew up the hill to Tengboche, largely because we were being chased by a train of yaks who were cruising up the mountain. We learned quickly in the Nepali dusty season that you do *not* want to be stuck behind a yak train. When we got to the top of the hill, we caught our first upclose look at the famous Tengboche monastery.
	Tengboche and the Imja Khola. From the top of the hill at Tengboche, we also had a fantastic view of the upper part of the Imja Khola valley, with the Everest/Lhotse Massif at center left and the unmistakable Ama Dablam dominating the horizon on the right.
	Buddhist Monk.  Shortly after our arrival at Tengboche, a rescue helicopter came screaming overhead, presumably on its way to Everest Base Camp to pick up an altitude sick trekker (we later learned that the helicopter was for two members of a Brazilian trekking group that were suffering from AMS, acute mountain sickness). As the chopper flew overhead, I snapped this shot of a curious monk peeking out of the monastery.
	Rich's 30th.  We hung out in Tengboche on Rich's 30th Birthday and took a boatload of pictures with our new tripod. This one of us looks up valley toward the Everest Group. Mt. Everest is barely poking its head out above the Nuptse ridge.
	Dana and Khumbila.  Here is one of my favorite pictures of Dana. This was taken next to the monastery looking back towards the group of mountains behind Khumbila.
	Yak Driver.  This woman at left was our yak train driver. She kept our beasts of burden from taking off with our gear and from mowing down helpless Germans and Swedes on the trail. Here she is cruising along the plateau at Tengboche, chasing after our yaks and looking pissed. Actually, now is the time to explain: we didn't really have yaks, we had dzopkyo (or Dzum, for females), which are sort of cross-breeds between the very fuzzy yaks and the lower elevation cows (or Tibetan bulls). Most "yaks" you see on the trails in the Khumbu are actually dzopkyo, which can venture to lower elevations (like Lukla) than their fuzzy yak counterparts. Still confused? Click here.
	Sherpa Group.  This is our group of Sherpa friends. Believe it or not, this entire group of persons, plus the yak driver, was just for us! We had (clockwise, from back left) one sherpa guide, Dana, our incredible Sirdar Ang Tshering Sherpa, one of the three(!) cook boys, our head cook, Rich, and the other two cook boys (seated in front). These guys were a great team and really took care of us. We felt a little stupid having a team of what seemed like 100 people carrying our stuff and then cooking for us, but we quickly got used to it. After all, not only is it very cheap to hire guides and cooks, but we also were supporting the local economy.
	Everest Sunset.  That night, we were treated to a perfect sunset, with the last rays of the day creating incredible alpenglow on the steep faces of the Lhotse/Everest massif. I  snapped this shot of the Everest group in the dying light of my thirtieth birthday. What a present.
	Lhotse at Dusk.  Five minutes later, a telephoto shot of the east face of Lhotse, the mountain looked quite different.
	Ama Dablam Basecamp. The next morning, Rich awoke sick yet again, so Dana headed up with Ang Tshering to the Ama Dablam base camp at ca. 16,500 feet. A serious climb from Tengboche in one day. Along the way, she took this shot of the mountain with a chorten in the foreground. On the way back through Namche Bazaar a couple of days later, we saw an almost identical shot on a postcard.
	Everest Close-Up.  Just before leaving Tengboche, I snapped this close-up of the massive Southwest Face of  Mt. Everest.  Ironically, I had spent the day before reading Bonnington's "Everest--the Hard Way", about the first ascent of that face.  The  trip back to Namche from Tengboche was trekking hell. It was dusty and the trail seemed to go on forever, snaking around the ridges between the Dudh Kosi bridge and the town of Namche. When we finally arrived, the cooks made us some soup and we collapsed in our lodge.
	Back to Lukla.  The next day's trek back to Lukla was much better. Rich was beginning to feel better, and we were ready to get back to the *relative* comforts of Kathmandu. When we got to Lukla, we experienced what many others have before us--flight delays and cancellations. The national airline, Royal Nepal Airlines was on strike, so tons of people were just hanging out on the airstrip looking for a way back to Kat. Our flight was cancelled due to "fog" in Kathmandu and smoke caused by huge forest fires in India. We learned that almost all international flights into and out of Kat were cancelled too. Luckily, we were able to negotiate a good price on a helicopter to take us back. The choppers can sneak in under the crappy weather and get you back to Kathmandu. It was a cool end to an exciting trip

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