Sleeping
All of the teahouses/lodges are pretty simple and inexpensive. Typically, we sleep in a room with three single beds and nothing more. We are excited when there are a few nails or hooks on the wall and an electric bulb that sheds some light. The rooms are never heated. We almost always sleep in our rented 3-season sleeping bags.
Sometimes we have a double room plus a single room. Often there is just enough room for the beds and our stuff. Our room in Gorak Shep, in the heart of the Everest region, was so small that we had to move the cots to get in and out of bed. But we felt fortunate to have a room there.
Eating
Guesthouse menus are nearly identical. Because of this we cycle through the options to maintain variety. The one dish we tend to have almost every night is dal bhat. Dal bhat is the national staple that is eaten by the Nepalese every day, sometimes twice. Dal bhat is rice, curried meat or vegetables, and a bowl of lentil soup to pour over it. When you order dal bhat they always come around and keep giving you more until you are full. Brook’s favorite dish is vegetable momos, which are steamed Tibetan dumplings.Toilets
Toilets are most often ceramic holes in the ground. You have to squat over them. You get better at it over time but you can’t linger long in that position since it hurts your legs. The toilet paper doesn't go down the hole. You put it in a separate container next to the toilet hole, such as a plastic jug with the top cut off. To flush, you have a pitcher and a big container of water. You fill the pitcher with water and pour it down the hole to flush.
The most basic toilets are wooden shacks with a hole cut in the floor, built on stilts over sloping ground. You can see everything below and it is not a pleasant site. In Goyem, we had one of these toilets. In the middle of the night we had to navigate a rickety set of stairs and make our way down a difficult path to get to it.More often, we had a shared toilet at the end of the hallway. At altitude, you have to urinate a lot. It can be an ordeal since the rooms and the hallways are cold. You have to put on your down jacket, pants and shoes and sometimes your hat. You also have to bring toilet paper and a headlamp. Every once in a while when you come across a western toilet and it is a nice change from the squat toilets.
Bathing
Showers are barebones, generally not that desirable -- often dirty and lacking hot water and water pressure. The systems used to deliver hot water vary quite a bit, from having a bucket of hot water attached to a hose, to a solar hot water heater with adequate pressure. The showers are public, in an outdoor shack (imagine outhouse), never in your room. It is always a puzzle to figure out where or how to hang your clothes to keep them dry.The three of us share one small pack towel so being the third to shower is not very desirable. We took showers regularly during the first part of the trip. It was warmer and we sweated more while walking. The higher we went, the colder it got so we only bathed and did laundry when it was absolutely critical. This was different from Africa, where it was hot enough to enjoy taking cold showers.
Evening Life
In the evenings, trekkers congregate in the common room/dining room of the lodge. This is our major opportunity for conversing with fellow travelers. We met people from at least the following 19 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, USWe frequently enjoy playing cards with Tanka and Dilli and sometimes others join in. Spades and Oh-Hell are our favorite card games. Typically we retire immediately after dinner to read in bed and go to sleep early. It is normal for most people to be in their rooms by 7:30 pm. The rooms are cold enough that we wear down jackets and sometimes even a hat and gloves to be comfortable reading in bed.
- Brook & Eydie
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