Start: Dole @ 9.50 (4,200m)
End: Machhermo @ 13.04 (4,470m)
Distance: 6km
Clearly having 2 blankets was wonderful for our bodies – neither of us woke until after 6am and then we both dozed on and off until we fought our way out of our cocoons around 2 hours later. A slightly odd breakfast, having decided to change from our usual porridge, we got the smallest portion of (cold) scrambled egg ever for Jayne, a non-cheesy cheese omelette for me and 4 slices of slight old, stale, not-toasted toast… Think we’ll stick with our usual in the future! Another short hiking day to limit our rate of ascent started with a steep climb up the hillside – due to our later start, most of the snow had melted already although we did get a few snowballs made and thrown (so that we could say we had a snowball fight in the Himalayas). We also made a snowman – naming him ‘Henry the Himalayan Snowman Sherpa’. 
The path continued to climb gradually as we passed rough two more villages, stopping in Luza for a cup of hot orange for continuing to Machhermo. 
Chose our lodge for the night based on the fact that there are only three rooms – haven’t we become even more anti-social!!! Had another hot orange and some noodle soup for lunch before I braved a cold bucket shower (so nice to wash off the dirt!) whilst Jayne tackled our filthy, crusty socks in the freezing cold glacier water. We headed over to the ‘Porter Shelter & Rescue Post’ at 3pm to listen to their free talk on altitude sickness, only to find it was cancelled as the doctor has gone up to Gokyo – bit disappointed as we both wanted to know the percentage of oxygen in our blood after all this trekking. 
Headed back to the tea lodge to find 2 other trekkers (who and equally picked this lodge for the same reason as us!). Sat on opposite ends of the dining room, warming by the fire and all doing our own things until dinner time. After which, we taught the lodge owner to play UNO – he was a natural and kicked all our asses!!
Friday 15th April 2016
Trans Travels 