Place: Phakding

First day of our Everest Basecamp trek. The weather started taking a turn for the worse and we weren’t able to take the plane that we booked. Our guide managed to get us on a helicopter instead, upgraded for free! I don’t have any other helicopter experiences to compare to, but I’d venture to say this was one of the best possible, the views were absolutely amazing the whole way. I re-experienced child-like glee again as we took off.

Food: Sherpa stew

Nepal has its own caste system similar to India. The people we spoke to didn’t view people of lower caste as lesser or worse people, just different with their own customs and lifestyle. Sherpa (capitalized) it turns out is an ethnic group that’s low in the caste system, not to be confused with sherpa (lower case) the porter job, though there is some history of origination there. I’m not sure if the stew we had is actually representative of the Sherpa culture, but that’s its namesake.