About The Year I Touched My Toes

In my 50s, my husband and I trekked to Everest Base Camp in 2015. The blog shares our treks, training and tips. WARNING: This amazing part of the world can be addictive. https://theyearitouchedmytoes.com/

Dawa Phuti Sherpa Community Leader

Posted on March 8, 2017 by The Year I Touched My Toes

For some time I have planned to write a post about this amazing woman who I met on both our Everest Base Camp treks. Both our treks started out from her Paradise Lodge in Lukla after breakfast, after our early flight to Lukla. We stayed our last night in Lukla before our morning flights back to Kathmandu at the end of our treks.

This photo was taken after our evening meal in her lodge in October 2015. Due to the two earthquakes that year, it was a quiet night guest wise in the lodge and so she had some time to sit down and talk to me about her work in the Khumbu. The reason I knew to ask about her work in the community was because on our 2013 trek we found a hotel directory with some information about Dawa and her husband Ang Pasang.

I have taken the information from the directory.

Dawa Phuti Sherpa

Born in Khunde
First Sherpa woman from the Khumbu region to attend school
Served as a nurse in the Khunde Hospital
Served as a teacher in the Khumjung School (The Edmund Hilary School)
Has been working in the hospitality industry for thirty years
Chairperson of the women’s group
Board member of the Himalayan Trust Nepal
Board member of Pasang Lhamu Nique Hospital Lukla
Recipient of the Friends of Khumbu
Recipient of the Peace Ambassador
Recipient of the Nava Durga award

Needles to say she is very busy with running the lodge and all the community work she continues to do. What better day than International Women’s Day, to acknowledge Dawa Phuti Sherpa’s wonderful work in the Khumbu both past and present.

Inside dining room at Paradise Lodge talking with Dawa

Nava Durga Award in Nepal

Celebrates Womanhood started in 2002 as an annual event to celebrate the vision, inner beauty and power of women. The objective is to honour women in various fields of arts, education, sports, community service, health and industry and to applaud their dedication to their respective fields. Shrijana Singh Yonjan, the mind behind the event says that each award has been named after a goddess and the attribute she signifies. The awards recognise nine different fields of achievement (Nava Durga).

Nava Durga Maa

Leaving Lukla Memorial to Pasang Lhamu the first Nepalese woman to summit Everest.

Kathmandu Colour

Image

Kathmandu Selling Flower Garlands

Selling flower garlands and flowers, Durbar Square, Kathmandu December 2013.

Bridge at Jorsale

Image

Everest Base Camp Trek

Did I cross this ?

The Everest Base Camp Marathon

Posted on January 20, 2017 by The Year I Touched My Toes

There are two in fact. The official Everest Base Camp Marathon is the Tenzing – Hillary Everest Marathon held annually on 29 May the date of their Everest summit. The biannual one held in November is run by a UK charity organisation and raises money from the event for community projects in Nepal. Both marathons finish in Namche Bazaar. Continue reading →

Pop-Up Restaurant at Everest Base Camp Aims for Peak of Fine Dining

Posted on December 18, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Talk about an “extreme foodies wish Luist”. Would love to know what they all ate. If you could do this where would it be ?

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chefs are trekking thousands of feet to prepare fancy food in the cold

Trekkers pass through a glacier at the Mount Everest base camp, Nepal.

The peaks of fine dining just keep getting higher and higher.

A caravan of roving chefs and their 15 guests is currently making its way up the Himalayas toward the base camp at Mount Everest, where, 17,500 feet above sea level and amid the lashing winds and bone-penetrating chill of the Nepalese winter, food will be served.

The One Star House Party, as the project has been dubbed, is preparing 16 more such destination dining experiences, one a month, through 2018, though not all of the destinations are so extreme. Among the chefs involved is James Sharman, a onetime chef de partie at Noma, the influential, soon-to-close restaurant that put Copenhagen on the global culinary map.

The Nepal journey is costing…

View original post 234 more words

Wonderlusting around the world

Gallery

Posted on December 16, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

This gallery contains 16 photos.

Originally posted on Out an' About:
I need another lifetime to travel to all the places I want to see. To experience even a fraction of the wonders in the world. Though I’ve traveled widely I’ve yet to see even…

Dughla Glacier Lake near Dughla

Image

Wordless Wednesday

Todd Samson and How Not to Trek in the Himalayas

Posted on November 7, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Todd Samson’s Salute to Sherpas and Climbing Lobuche

What Todd Samson has been getting up to lately is far from tame. Todd Samson is an Australian Canadian television celebrity is currently in a show called Body Hack.

Each episode looks at a different group of people who are involved in extreme activity and how the body copes with it. Taking it one step further Todd Samson walks in their shoes for some time. The Nepalese episode looked at the life of the Sherpa people who work as porters along the Everest Base Camp Trail. Continue reading →

Fashion on the Track

Posted on November 2, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Striding Through Pheriche in the Khumbu

Here I am walking through Periche looking like the Michelin Man. There are lots of terrible shots of me on the trek with hat hair, up way too close etc. Showers are a rare thing on the track, so is clean hair and there are no mirrors. Complete with the hat and given today is the first Tuesday in November, the day of the nation stopping Melbourne Cup (horse race) I decided on a twist the Fashion on the Track theme. Tongue in cheek of course. However my ensemble does show off some accessories that you shouldn’t leave home for Everest Base Camp without. Continue reading →

A Snapshot of the Bridges to EBC

Posted on October 31, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Bridges the Traffic Lights of the Everest Base Camp Trek

via Daily Prompt: Bridge

The last bridge before Gorak Shep, the last place with lodges before Everest Base Camp. That’s me and our porter guide just ahead. Continue reading →

Weather Forecast at EBC

Posted on October 19, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Believe It or Not

It’s true there is weather station on the Everest Base Camp Trek Trail

Italian Weather Pyramid out of Lobuche in the direction of Gorak Shep

The Weather Cam at Everest Base Camp or thereabouts. The Trainer walked there by himself. I decided to stay in the lodge and rest up for the next to big days. Built by the Italians he joked he was in search of a short black coffee …

Dingboche Door Framed View

Posted on October 13, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Lodge in dingboche Everest Base Camp trek

Our lodge in Dingboche

Climbing to Namche Bazaar

Posted on September 30, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Day Two Phakding to Monjo 2013 and Phakding to Namche Bazaar 2015

Above is the suspension bridge at Upper Phakding. We stayed at the lodge just above the end of the bridge in the photo on the way back down from our 2013 trek. The bridge on the Everest Base Camp Trek Blog and my donkey video.

PLANNING THE TREK BY THE SEASONS

When planning our trek for late September we expected some rain. Continue reading →

Donkey Central at Phakding – Chuk Chuk – Video

Posted on September 30, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Keeping the slow donkeys moving from the safety of the sidelines. CHUK!

Rule Number Two: Give Way to the donkeys too.

I posted this video on Facebook on our first trek in November December 2013. It was taken on my iphone and shows the number of donkeys on the trail and why you don’t want to be on the bridge at the same time as donkey herd. Continue reading →

Heading Out for Everest Base Camp – Day One Lukla to Phakding

Posted on September 25, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

trek n.1. a long difficult journey, esp. on foot 2. a journey or stage, esp by ox wagon 3. make a trek – trekker

Saying Goodbye in Melbourne

In September 2015 my husband and I flew to Nepal to trek to Everest Base Camp. At the departure hall at Melbourne Airport saying goodbyes to our adult daughters, the eldest hugged her father and said

“Dad, go easy on Mum remember it’s her holiday too.” She turned to me and said “Mum, ….man up.”

And with that sage advice… Continue reading →

Beautiful Bhaktapur Nepal

Posted on September 22, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Beautiful, peaceful Bhaktapur once the royal city for Nepal situated 20 kilometres east of Kathmandu. An easy day trip and well worth the time. Continue reading →

Stepping Out in Thamel Kathmandu

Posted on September 21, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Thamel the Tourist Precinct of Kathmandu

Barbie and the Trainer in a Bakery shop in Thamel

We all know Barbie gets around, but we were a little surprised, to find Marzipan Barbie, stepping out in our favourite bakery in Thamel the tourist district in Kathmandu. I suggested my husband pose with her. He’s the master mind, researcher and driver behind our two treks to Everest Base Camp and The Trainer in my blog. Continue reading →

To Walk To Hike To Trek

Posted on September 20, 2016 by The Year I Touched My Toes

Climb Every Mountain

A year ago today we, The Trainer (my husband and not a personal trainer) and I flew from Melbourne into Kathmandu to trek to Everest Base Camp. We nearly cancelled the trip because of the earthquakes but had trained so much, we agreed to go. Two years earlier we had gone even though I didn’t really want to go. We trained hard for the trek, we walked, biked, stepped, climbed, stretched and hiked for six months and, in fact over trained, but we didn’t make it to Base Camp. There is a story there, because we should have and could have.

In September 2015 we were well and truly prepared to try again. We had trained for six months – general fitness then building up to more intense training in the last three months, treadmill, walks, bike rides, stretching, stair training and I guess you could say hiking. I looked up a few definitions of hike.

hike walk for a long distance, especially across country.
“they hiked across the moors” synonyms: walk, go on foot, trek, tramp, trudge, traipse, slog, footslog, plod, march

We hiked, I trudged and tramped all over the river area near where we live and all over the hills in our neighbourhood with our trekking gear, boots, packs and my trekking poles. The Trainer refused to use trekking poles.

This was much to the puzzlement of commuters passing by and to the amusement of hospital patients in their beds looking out the hospital windows onto one of our practicing hills. No sooner did I arrive at the top of the hill than the Trainer pointed back down to the bottom, striding off leaving me resting at the top. I would get to the bottom and he strode back up telling me how many more times he wanted me to go up and down. Each training session he would add a little more water to the bottles in my back pack slowly increasing the weight. Which brings me to the second definition which resonates with me:

hike – to walk or march a great distance, especially through rural areas, for pleasure, exercise, military training, or the like.

Military training! Yes. And most the time it wasn’t pleasurable. I would come home from work and have a backpack thrown at me and was told to get changed. Rain or shine, out we went. By the time we left for Kathmandu we were training five days a week including week nights. By the last week I was exhausted and near tears when he suggested a final training session. That was in 2013. Last year I told him what I thought about his idea of training on the fourth or fifth day before we were to fly out.

So Hike I think I know all about it. But I have to say I had never really hiked or trekked before. So you hike to train for the trek because it is very hard to train for trekking. You experience trekking because trekking supposes some huge challenge and a journey in the big sense of the word, which trekking to Everest Base Camp is. And it is so worth all the training, it is the best thing I have ever done.

At 4200 metres on the Dingboche Ridgetop

Above Pangboche

Kathmandu

Image

Swayambhunath Stupa

Goddess Kali in Durbar Square

Durbar Square

Pasupanthinath ghats in Kathmandu

Garden of Dreams

At the Top of Kala Patthar

Video

I made it. I climbed to Kala Patthar the highlight of the Everest Base Camp trek. The video of me reaching the top, breathless and exhausted.

About The Year I Touched My Toes

Dawa Phuti Sherpa

Nava Durga Award in Nepal

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Todd Samson’s Salute to Sherpas and Climbing Lobuche

Share this:

Like this:

Striding Through Pheriche in the Khumbu

Share this:

Like this:

Bridges the Traffic Lights of the Everest Base Camp Trek

Share this:

Like this:

Believe It or Not

It’s true there is weather station on the Everest Base Camp Trek Trail

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Day Two Phakding to Monjo 2013 and Phakding to Namche Bazaar 2015

PLANNING THE TREK BY THE SEASONS

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Saying Goodbye in Melbourne

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Thamel the Tourist Precinct of Kathmandu

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: