Once again, our stocks are getting low and it's time to go shopping. Convienently it's market day in Namche so after several coffees and cheesebreads in the Everest bakery we head for the market place. On several levels, it is packed out with traders and locals selling dal, rice, eggs, greens, chickens and so on as well as more surprising items such as jeans and pringles.

Market day in Namche Bazaar Photo (c) Jeremy Thomson 1998

With the help of Pasang and some of the porters we amass a pile of provisions nearly as large as the heap we bought in Kathmandu. It's a little more expensive but still excellent value.

While we are shopping, Antoine disappears off for a shave. Finding a tiny barbers under the market place, he gets a fine shave and a complimentary and fairly violent head massage which includes stretching the eyelids. All for 150 rps - a total ripoff, we later discovered. home. It's been a long time since we've had bread, cakes or beer though.

Although Namche is a fairly metropolitan place, there is only one phone available in the whole town, so it takes some queuing to phone home, our first contact with the UK for over a month.

Accommodation is very easy - just walk into any building and there's a 90% chance that it will be a guest house. We rejected the first place Pasang recommended, only to find that they are all more or less the same. They only cost ten or twenty rps a night, but may require you to eat there. Not a bad idea as the menus are varied and cheap but the food invariably takes hours to turn up and arrives in a strange order. So what? Order a jug or two of chhang and relax.

In the evening, we try to buy the porters all a drink. This turns out to be a sweet-smelling spirit in plastic pouches called 'TOP', which is probably better avoided. The evening didn't exactly take off, so I took an early night and retired to my rapidly collapsing bed next door.