EBC Day 5: Welcome to the Bates’ Motel...

There was a lot of yak dung on the trail and in the window of this building, presumably drying to be used as fuel to generate heat. As far as we could tell, none of our teahouses burned any during our stays.

We eventually arrived in Pheriche at the Panoramic Teahouse, definitely a major step down in quality from our other accommodations, especially compared to last night’s lodge. Bummer that our acclimatization stop couldn’t have been there instead of having to spend two nights in this drafty plywood box.

The hallway to our rooms was reminiscent of something out of the Bates Motel from the movie Psycho (or rather what I imagine that would have looked like since I’ve never actually had the guts to watch the movie). 

We paid extra for ensuite rooms. The bathroom, also constructed out of plywood, consisted of a toilet, giant barrel holding water, can to use as a scoop and garbage bin. Not only was there no running water, but we would not encounter running water again until the evening of Day 12. Thus we needed to use the can to scoop up water in order to force the toilet to flush; the bin was for the used toilet paper. We couldn’t even begin to imagine what a difficult job it must have been to refill those giant barrels. 

I never used tap water to brush my teeth anyways, but it was a bit weird to stand at the sinks outside the dining room to brush our teeth and wash our hands. 

Luckily the dining room wasn’t made out of plywood as we spent a lot of time there. Each afternoon they turned on the TV to play a movie about Everest; although I have absolutely no interest in ever going any higher than EBC, I was still intrigued enough to watch.