Today I left Namche Bazar. Mingma stayed behind to deal with a family matter, but should be in Lukla Sunday, the day after tomorrow. Pasang and I made great time, and got all the way back to the airport town of Lukla before dinner. My knees and ankles are asking me questions I don’t want to answer, but it seems I will have some time to relax here.

The main thing I noticed during the afternoon’s hike, was how much more dangerous all the waters had become. Every bridge we crossed exposed us to the tremendous noise of the river being pulled between boulders as it raced itself to fall lower. I noticed waterfalls that I hadn’t seen on the walk up. And every cascade & tributary I had seen before, had become a swollen rapid. But the walk down today was safe, and we were only followed by intermittent drizzle rather than constant downpour.

Once we got to the Tea-House I’ll be staying at, we found Dan Mazur. Today was his second day trying to fly back to Kathmandu. The flying business here seems more like a game of chance than a service you can book. The hot topics around the dining room were leads on what passenger flights won’t turn into cargo shipments, the latest weather forecasts and if anyone knows someone whose brother flies helicopters up here. Tomorrow I will try to contact Mingma again and get some sort of ticket situation figured out. After that, I will walk to the town of Muse and ask random strangers to show me where the working biogas digester is. We’ll see how well that goes…

My time in Nepal is beginning to dwindle and I am sad to lose my friend and traveling companion Pasang. He wants to get back to the upper Khumbu, but he promised to say good bye before he leaves tomorrow. I have met a lot of good people here. Hopefully I will come and visit them again, next time to start building at Gorak Shep.