Namche Bazaar

Namche grew where two valleys meet: the Dudh Kosi coming up from the lowlands and the Bhote Kosi leading north towards the Nangpa La, the glaciated pass into Tibet. Sherpa families, whose ancestors crossed from eastern Tibet several centuries ago, settled the Khumbu and made Namche the place where Tibetan salt and wool were exchanged for grain, paper and iron carried up from the Nepali hills. The weekly market, still held on Saturdays, is the direct descendant of that trade, and the older stone houses around the bowl belonged to the trading families who ran it.

Two events changed the town in the twentieth century. The closing of the Tibetan border after 1959 cut the northern trade, and the arrival of mountaineers opened another economy. After Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Everest in 1953, expeditions began recruiting in the Khumbu, and Hillary's Himalayan Trust built a school at Khumjung in 1961 and the hospital at Kunde in 1966. The airstrip at Lukla, built in 1964, put the region within a day of Kathmandu.

Sagarmatha National Park was established in 1976 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, with its headquarters on the ridge above the town. Trekking numbers grew steadily from the 1970s, and Namche turned from a market village into a service town of lodges, bakeries and equipment shops. The earthquake of April 2015 shook the Khumbu and closed the trails for a season, and the town has since been rebuilt and expanded, with concrete, glass and solar panels now common among the stone walls.

Namche is a Sherpa town, and its public life follows the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. A gompa stands above the houses, mani walls carved with the mantra om mani padme hum line the approaches, and strings of prayer flags run between the rooftops and the ridges. Losar, the Tibetan new year, and Dumje, a summer village festival, are the occasions when families return from Kathmandu and abroad, while the best-known public ritual in the region, the masked Mani Rimdu dances, takes place a day's walk away at Tengboche.

The town is also the centre of a professional community with few parallels. Guides, climbing sirdars, lodge owners and expedition outfitters live here, and Sherpa names appear repeatedly in the record books of Himalayan climbing. That success has brought money, foreign education and long absences: many families keep a house in Kathmandu, and children often study in the capital or overseas.

Custom is taken seriously. Walkers pass chortens and mani walls on the left, remove shoes in monasteries and homes, and do not point feet towards an altar. Sherpa hospitality is understated and generous, and butter tea or a cup of chhang is offered to visitors. Nepali is the working language of the trail, Sherpa the language of the household, and English is widely spoken because the town has lived on foreign visitors for two generations.

About 1,600 people live in the town, part of Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality, though the population swells and shrinks with the trekking seasons. Almost every household is connected to tourism: lodges, teahouses, bakeries, gear shops, portering, guiding and helicopter work. Outside the two main seasons many residents move down to Kathmandu, where the winters are easier and schools are better supplied.

Goods arrive on the backs of porters, yaks and zopkio, or by helicopter, which makes everything dearer the higher it goes. Electricity comes largely from small hydropower schemes in the valley, water from springs above the town, and internet from satellite and microwave links; power and connection both fail in bad weather. Rubbish and sewage are persistent problems, and local committees, the national park and Sherpa-run waste projects have worked for years on carrying refuse down the valley.

The day begins early: porters set off at first light, lodge kitchens serve breakfast before the trails fill, and the market ground is busiest on Saturday mornings. Afternoons cloud over and the town quietens. The underlying worries are the changing climate — retreating glaciers, unstable glacial lakes and less reliable snow — the fragility of the Lukla air link, and the dependence of an entire valley on a season that can be cancelled by weather or events far away.

Trail food in Namche starts with daal bhaat, the Nepali plate of rice, lentil soup, curried vegetables and pickle, refilled until the eater stops. Sherpa cooking runs alongside it: shyakpa, a thick stew of meat, vegetables and hand-cut dough; riki kur, potato pancakes eaten with butter; thukpa, noodle soup; and tsampa, roasted barley flour, stirred into tea or soup. Potatoes are the staple crop of the Khumbu and appear at almost every meal.

Drinks are equally distinct. Butter tea, salty and made with churned butter, is the household drink, while chhang, a cloudy beer of fermented barley or millet, and raksi, a clear distilled spirit, are poured at festivals. Most trekkers stay with masala tea, ginger and lemon or hot chocolate, and alcohol is best avoided while the body is adjusting to the altitude.

Namche has a reputation on the trail for its bakeries and coffee houses, which sell apple pie, cinnamon rolls, yak cheese sandwiches and proper espresso, and for the last reliable choice of imported food before the trail climbs. Yak and nak cheese, made at dairies in the valley, is a local product worth trying. Meat is carried up unrefrigerated from lower villages, so many guides recommend a vegetarian plate above Namche, and the Buddhist objection to killing animals means the Khumbu itself slaughters very little.