Dal bhat and lodge-stove evenings

Lodge dining rooms are where the trekking day ends. Bedrooms at Dingboche are unheated, so everyone gathers in the long dining room around a central stove fed with dried yak dung, the main fuel above the tree line. Guides play cards in a corner, trekkers swap stories, and the lodge family moves between kitchen and tables, filling thermoses of hot water and lemon tea.

Order dal bhat. It arrives on a steel plate: rice, a bowl of lentil soup, a vegetable curry, often potato and greens, and a spoon of sharp pickle. The custom is free refills, offered until you refuse. Guides and porters eat it twice a day, and their saying 'dal bhat power, 24 hour' has a point: it is balanced, filling and easy to digest when appetite flags at altitude.

Eat well and early, because hunger falls with height and calories matter. Skip meat this high; it is carried up unrefrigerated from far below. Avoid alcohol until you are descending. Lodges charge for hot showers, charging and Wi-Fi, so keep small notes. And thank the cook: everything on your plate came up on someone's back.