At Breakfast we met up with Travis and Nelli again. They used our porter to carry Nellys gear from the last stretch to Dolay, and our porter was happy to oblige and make an extra US$15 for the day. The same went for today. It was absolutely freezing, so we pulled out a jumper for the walk. Once we got going, Kempy quickly removed his, though I was still comfortable in mine. As always so far, the hardest bits were at teh beginning and end of the day – Steepest at the beginning and least air in the end. In Nepal everyone always says ‘Slowly, Slowly’. Luckily for us our guide doesn’t. He’ll walk at a good pace and only slow or stop when we fall behind too far – a system that works brilliantly for Kempy and I. Today, though, we got stuck behind a group of swiss tourists doing it ‘slowly, slowly’. I was /cold/. Luckily our guide saw an opportunity to overtake and took it. We arrived at Machherma for lunch and Travis and Nelly joined us not long after. Here I had my first truly bad tea. The mint tea tasted like it was made of dirt. So much that I let it cool before puring it out. Luckily the weather favoured us and we had the tea outside – I’d have hated to let a full cup of tea go back. After another delicious lunch, we noticed a ball on the wall (in a net) and asked if we could have a kick of it in the front yard. We were allowed to and played hard for a good 3 minutes before being exhausted and needing a break. Several minutes later we resumed until we lost our breath again… I think we lasted nearly 10 minutes this time by pacing ourselves a bit more 😉 After the strenuous ball game we sat around and chatted for a bit and the others had a beer. When the sun hid behind the clouds it got cold real quick which made us retreat inside. Nelly and Travis bouthgt some chips and Kempy and I cracked out some metwurst to share. We chatted for a bit longer before settling in to read a bit. Eventually it got cold inside too, and the innkeepers tried to get a fire going in the common rooms pot belly oven. An hour of mucking around with it by Kempy, myself and the innkeepers it got going. They used a hand-cranked blower and a lot of kerosene to get it started, but once it was going it was faboulously warm. At some point we gave our dinner order and I purchased another deck of cards (local ones!) and did my best to recall the rules of canasta. We played an open hand before dinner, and a proper game after another delicious meal. Nelly and I got to 4750 of 5000 points and we decided to call it a night. I settled in to sleep while Kempy read on the kindle for a few more hours.