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We are literally following in the footsteps of Tenzing and Hillary on this trek - or rather just the last 10-14 days or so (in 1953 they would have started from India by train, and walked from Kathmandu!) They stayed for several days in the famous Namche Bazaar to organise their expedition and get supplies. We stayed here for a couple of days too, ostensibly to acclimatise, but we also stayed for the little luxuries that trekkers crave - German bakeries!! To get to Namche from the previous village, there is a dreadfully steep and continuous uphill climb for almost 3 hours. I literally crawled up this hill, as a result of a combination of recovering from diarrhoea, the altitude, and the general physical effort this takes. I was reassured to find that Sir Ed Hillary, the first man to climb Everest, wrote in his memoirs that “We climbed slowly up this formidable hill”!! Once at Namche, an altitude of over 3400m, one has one’s head literally in the clouds - they roll in in the afternoon, and the scene is often a white-out in the evening. When the clouds part the scenery is quite amazing - Namche is located on the side of a steep hill, and when clear you can look right down the valley to the river some 800m below, and if it’s very clear you can see the snowy peaks of the Himalayas above.