The first half of the day we walked on a rather flat ridge route at an elevation of 4,500m/14,800ft, with a panoramic view; down the valley laid in parallel to our return path if we did decide to go back to Lukla without detour. Considering the high altitude, I hired a porter to carry my backpack. My partner said the weight did not bother him and insisted on carrying it himself. I chatted with a Boeing engineer along the way and left my partner far behind. After about three hours we reached a village called Thukla, which was about halfway to Lobuche, a perfect spot for the lunch break.

After lunch we started climbing “the wall before Lobuche”, which was mentioned by the girl from Guangzhou we met a couple of days ago. The “wall” was just a steep incline, raising the elevation by 400m/1,300ft. I guess people called it "wall", not only because it is steep, but it also had something to do with your being tired when reaching here. And this was not only the second half of the day, but also the second to the last before the destination. The rest of the path to EBC would rise less, albeit at a high altitude.

In the early afternoon, dark clouds rolled in, and wind gusts came that pushed cold air directly to my stomach. On the lower land I was always warm when moving; here two layers of clothing later I was still shivering. I raised the neck warmer to cover my mouth and nose to filter the freezing airflow, and I felt better instantly, but I was soon out of breath. It might have something to do with my blood oxygen level, which was 99% at home but 85% last night. As I remember in those early COVID days, doctors would advise their patients to rush to the ER when the Pulse Oximeter read below 90. Here I was: I felt almost nothing if the air intake had not been obstructed by the neck warmer (the same effect as running with a mask on?). I resorted to taking in a few big breaths of cold air before pulling up the neck warmer to cover the mouth and nose, until I was short of breath again, then repeated the cycle … as such I struggled for two to three hours before getting to Lobuche, a village situated at 5,000m/16,400ft elevation. I checked into a teahouse and waited another two hours before my partner arrived. He was exhausted. Looking at him, I felt pretty lucky not to be in his shoes, then I realized that I did not carry the load the whole day.

Lobuche had seven or eight teahouses but no cell signal. Only the hikers going up would spend the night here; when going down, they usually skip this village and go straight down to Pheriche for the night. Pheriche is on the path parallel to the ridge route between Dingboche and Thukla that we were on today.

We retired to our rooms soon after dinner since there was little to do. I opened the Kindle app on my tablet, which had not been charged for several days but still retained 65% power, trying to read myself to sleep. I felt good thinking about tomorrow that we would reach the destination and all misery would be over.