Nepal Challenge by Steve_Shears

5th April - Afternoon

By the afternoon we had left the new road a long way behind and were encountering what I vividly remembered from last time as the dreaded flights of stone steps just before Tikhedunga. The last time I had been there it had rained and the main problem was keeping your feet on the slippery stone -this time it was dry and baking hot and I was glad of my two walking poles as we went down the relentless steps. Around lunchtime Emma had made the observation that my earlier assault on Poon Hill had probably expended my last reserves of energy - that was hard to argue with and the 3000 or so steps were now feeling like torture. Some of the others were feeling the 'burn' too -including Dee, who was running on fumes now. By the time we made it to Tikhedunga I was so exhausted I was feeling rather unsteady on my feet - there had just not been enough fuel going in for quite a few days now. I decided that on reaching Tikhedunga that I was going to have a beer no matter what! I was having said beer when Dee plonked herself down next to me - she had finally made it and she seemed drained physically and psychologically from the past few days -I seemed to be able to switch on my listening ear long enough to support her as best I could before turning my attention to finding out if the shower system was working well enough to get clean -I remember thinking I was actually looking forward to getting back to the relative comfort of big town Pokhara and showers that stood some chance of working -yay!! I also remembered thinking that the last time I had been here I had faced the mossie infested toilet of the apocalypse but that didn't seem a big deal - must be getting used to it?