frauke at large

just before you hit Everest Base Camp. 

Positively charming – including a hand full of houses, a big river, a bridge, a restaurant/hostel and no running water or electricity, Shegar was another one of my highlights of the trip. By now I was OK dealing with the altitude ranges (i.e. 3800m to 5250m) and so set off on an adventure around our hotel complex – for lack of things to do and since there was no hot water to have a shower. First thing I came across was what looked like someone’s kitchen, but was clearly signposted: tea house. I stuck my head through the door, but quickly withdrew when our guide emerged with our driver waving at someone passing the courtyard. My next discovery was ‘the telephone room’ … hard to explain but made me laugh out loud … featured a telephone, several apparatuses with flashing lights, three or four wires holding it all together and two guys crawling around on the floor … the whole thing was so fantastically out of this world that if I had had any mastery of the language I would have asked to make a phone call.

As the evening drew, we walked to the one restaurant/hostel, to be greeted by two fellow travelers who, it turned out, were also on their way to the top of the world. We had met them earlier in the day when we passed another one of the mountain summits and exchanged ‘Merry Christmas’ greetings and so it was fun to meet again and get the chance to chat … made a date to meet at again at the top of the world …

The other real highlight in Shegar was stepping out of the hostel to walk back to our place … I have never in my life seen a sky like this one: due to the fact that there was no electricity anywhere … for miles and miles and miles … the sky was light up with millions of stars. One always hears about how some stars shine brighter than others, but this was the first time ever that I actually saw it. The milky way was grandiose and I must have spent a good 10 minutes looking up and making out different star constellations. All of a sudden no electricity was not so bad after all.

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