We rose reasonably early, and besides an earache I felt fine. We had a light breakfast and headed for Hotel Everest ~ apparently the fanciest hotel on the trek ~ and were greeted by dense clouds and some rain. The trek up to Hotel everest was 400ish meters of stairs. I only took my daypack for this round trip and I found I could hardly breathe at some points. But I made it none-the-less, all be it slowly. We decided to skip exploring the surrounding villages as the rain was getting worse and the cloud so dense we could hardly see 20m in front of us. We returned to a different lodge for lunch, where Kempy had his first bad meal ~ turns out ‘Yak cheese’ on lasangae tastes somewhat like vomit. As my stomach was still recovering I played it safe with some stir-fried rice which was plain but edible. Still couldn’t finish it though. After lunch we went shopping ~ bought me an ear-warmer and some postcards. We bumped into a couple of hikers we’d met on the way up and heard about a bomb threat at Kathmandu airport and a plane-crash (19 dead) on a mountain flight. This prompted me to spend an our at the internet cafe, update this journal and send my family a ‘we’re fine’ email. Now Kempy is reading on my kindle and I’ve written a bunch of postcards. Should be dinner time soon, then sleep!