We checked back into our ‘posh’ hotel and hit the town for most people’s final night. Mary and I had another 24 hours before we departed. We felt like Kings and Queens of the World and strutted around with a “we’ve done it, and survived” attitude. This was met with a “we couldn’t care less” response from most we met.

A must-do is a visit to the Rum Doodle restaurant where they provide you with a Yeti foot and a number of Sharpies. You can then design your own memento to the adventure. And they stick it on the wall/ceiling. Hopefully it is there to this day. They had feet from all the great mountaineers (including Sir Ed and Chris Bonnington etc.), but the famous ones were kept in a presentation case. We were proud of our effort which mentioned all our names and those of our guides. The curry we had there was also very excellent; and as we were only 24 hours away from international airline toilets we treated ourselves to cooked meat.

We also visited a Tibetan restaurant (predictably called “Yak”) where we sampled Tongba beer with our momos (dumplings). This is brought to you in a wooden pot. Inside the pot is pre-fermented millet. To this you add water which kick-starts the fermentation process even more and produces a rather weird somewhat alcoholic drink. In fact this is the drink alcoholics have been waiting for as the more water you add, the more alcohol is produced!

We also re-visited Pashupathinath once more as a group for more gawping at a Hindu funeral ceremony. On the way back to the centre we stopped off at Dwarika’s Hotel – the poshest in Kathmandu, where we had lunch and wondered why we hadn’t booked this for our acclimatisation week prior to the trek. It appeared as if none of the rooms had a view of a brick wall, so it would have been nice.

Back at our hotel we bade farewell to all our new-found friends and they set off for the airport.