Today was wet and muddy but we could tell the weather was improving, so our spirits lifted too. We also discovered just how fast we could walk downhill. What a revelation! What took us two days to complete on the way up now took us just one day. As we reached vegetation again we walked through this spectacular wood with brilliantly coloured mosses.

Another myth I’m happy to dispel is that this is the “toilet roll trail”. We had heard that litter and toilet paper were major problems on this route due to the sheer number of trekkers and lack of facilities. However, we did not find this to be the case at all. We saw no litter to speak of and no toilet paper either. All the tea houses had basic, but functioning toilets and bathrooms. All we saw was a lot of big nature.

We walked straight through Tengboche and down to Amadablam Lodge where we had stayed a week before. Here you can see Mary sporting a pair of ‘Trespass’ gaiters. We hadn’t brought proper ones with us, so the porters had created these out of two plastic bags we had. And they worked! We thought about sending this picture to Trespass in the hope they would give us a voucher or free leggings for life, but we never got round to it. Side note: I once made a laptop case out of a Krispy Kreme donut box. I sent them the picture and got a £5 voucher – so it can be done.

Another amazing thing the porters had kept from us was the fact these tea houses had showers. In en-suites! The Amadablam Lodge had a whole corridor of rooms in another building with hot(ish) showers. Bliss! This is a nice trick that Exodus play on their trekking guests. They make the ascent really really hard going and then give us treats on the way down.