Here in Tenboche, I met an Irish guy, who is just starting out on his trip. His intentions are to climb both: Labuche East and Island Peak! Should be quite a challenge for him to do! Him and his wife just recently relocated to Dubai, because his wife found a good job there. Ireland still suffering from the economic crisis. He will use his time to climb and reflect... I guess this is what pretty much everyone is doing here, who is climbing or just trekking the Himalayas!
Then there is a different kind of traveller; the casual adventurer. These are people's, who just decide it could be a cool idea to trek through Nepal. They don't quite know what to expect, nor are they well prepared. They just want to go and do because it just sounds like such an adventure. I met two Swedish girls like this today. They clearly had no plan and also no concept, but then again, they were not particularly fussed if they now make Base Camp or not... They just said that they want to continue as far as they can get and if they feel sick, they would just turn back....good attitude! When they explained their original plan, the one girl looked on the back of her hand and said that they wanted to get to Lobuche by today. I thought to myself that there would be no chance to even get close to this place! We trekked downhill for nearly 4 hours to get half way! On top of that, it was already passed lunchtime and they were just outside the place we wanted to get to....clearly no concept! I asked them if they have any alternatives and we spoke about a couple of options, but this is where it ended....not acclimatized, oh, I nearly forgot, they also only had 5 days to complete the round trip.....say no more! I asked them if they do have altitude sickness medication with them and when they said that have like 6 tablets between them, I wished them good luck and we all continued with our journeys....

Just so interesting what kind of people you meet here....

I met another American lady, who was traveling the valleys up and down. I met her first in Goyko, then again on Theron route to Everest Base Camp and then again somewhere on route taking a break. She wants to club Island Peak and just used this time to acclimatize. At least she knew what she wanted to do, set out her intentions and made every effort in turning this onto reality... Respect!

There are soapy stories like this. When we met Hassan from Pune, India, he nearly fell over backwards and thought that Ross was a working colleague from home...we had such a laugh with him! What a character! Then, there was this English couple, who I met in Labuche. Not for the first time I must say.... We met on numerous occasions before...either in a tea house for lunch or I'm the evenings because we shared the same accommodation. Eventually, we began to chat and he was asking me of I was following them.... We had a good laugh together and then went onto our way again....will we meet again?