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Oct 25 - Nov 15, 1998

Our parting with Manny and Emmy was sad, after spending a week together, sleeping side by side and even arguing like brothers and sisters it was even sadder then we had anticipated but we it know it was destined from the beginning. After spending two nights in the attic in Deboche and two days celebrating our "summiting" of base camp and the Mani Ramdu Festival we were ready to get moving again. it was in Deboche that we experienced our only truly negative moment on the trek, a robbery.

ironically, while Jeff was in the dining room drawing pictured and negotiating to buy the Siberian’s polar-fleece coat, our bags were being rifled through in the attic above, and the Fleece coat that Jeff already owned was stolen along with three-thousand rupees(50 us dollars, about 3 days worth of living well) from Manny's hip-sack, and a carabinder from Emmy's waterbottle. Even though nothing was stolen from Mikes bag, a bottle of soap opened up an prematurely and began to wash that mikes clothes they so badly needed. So even though we were sad to end this part of our trip with Manny and Emmy we were ready to move on………

After our Rara noodle soup lunch at about 2 pm in Tangboche we knew the sun would cloud over soon and we had 2 - 3 hours walk ahead of us to Phortse to begin our next adventure. So we hugged and took some photos with Manny and Emmy and started on our way.

Our walk led us steeply down hill about 300 meters through the forest and all the way back down to the river. We crossed a small wooden bridge and then walked all the way back up 300 meters to Phortse. The walk was beautiful and followed a ridge that dropped steeply down into the river valley. This was the only walk on our trek where we didn’t see any westerners in fact we only saw one other person, we accidentally startled a monk, meditating on the side of the cliff.