Hey good afternoon, at least afternoon in Nepal calling in from Day 27 of the great big walk. We are here again in Chyamtang at an elevation of 2187 m and we have had a very excellent day resting, relaxing, , laundrocating and practicing ascending and descending. I wanted to say a special hello to all the schools that are following along, specifically today to Bishop Abraham and the grade 4’s there and a special hello to Mrs. Courage who I know has been our longtime follower and reader of Everest books. Just a reminder that you can leave us questions. They will get texted in if you want to know something specific about how life is going for us on the great big walk and it was great today to have a couple of different texts. Thanks Tyler for letting us know that they fitbit floor is equal to 10 feet and welcome aboard Jerry Riley. Good to know that you’re enjoying reading about our exploits here on the great big walk. Welcome aboard! And thanks as well to the Memorial University of Newfoundland office of engagement for their support of these audio blog posts.

One of the things that we did today was entertain the entire village of Chyamtang it seems. When we got to practice our rope ascending and descending techniques. When we go over eventual paths over the next week we may need to use fixed rope and we practiced that it seemed like everybody in the village turned out to watch. It was quite entertaining because even the 5 year olds were climbing the type of rock without any protection that we were all geared up with our harnesses and (inaudible) so it was quite fun and it was kind of a great scene in my mind at the moment. If you can picture sort of 40 people at the bottom all sort of watching a visitor to Nepal go up a rope, you sort of have a little bit of the picture.

Wanted to mention our amazing awesome rest day lunch today. On rest days we have the most awesome food. We had meat momos and local greens and bamboo shoe that were harvested nearby so that was a pretty yummy lunch and usually if we’re lucky we get cake that is baked by our amazing cook team for dessert on rest day so we’re all hoping and crossing our fingers that cake is coming our way.

In terms of walk totals today I had 4 381 steps, 27 floors and 2.9 km. We walked over to a river to wash some clothes and some hair and clean off some boots to get them ready for waxing. Marian had 3646 steps 26 floors and 2.5 km and Cam was wearing her fitbit much today so she reported in at 837 steps and 0.5 km. She actually did much more than that but you know if you don’t wear the fitbit you don’t get the credit. Kind of an exciting thing, one of the things you can do is catch up on the journal on rest days. So we added up all the floors and with our new statistic of knowing that a floor is 10 feet it turns out that we have done a total of 40 240 feet of elevation gained, registered or measured by the fitbit. Which comes up to about 12 000 m of elevation gained which means we have climbed Everest one and a half times already from sea level so that is pretty exciting. We are only a third of the way through.

Also thought I would tell you since we are here in Sherpa village a little bit about the prayer flags that we see quite often. Their other name is Lungta or wing ports and the idea is when the wind blows is the prayer gets released from their prayer flag den. Different readings that I have done give them different colors or give the different colors different meanings, but one that I had read says that the blue means air, the white means water, red fire, green earth and yellow space and when you see the strings of prayer flags they usually go in that order. Blue, white, red, green, yellow and repeated patterns. So on our trip here so far sometimes we’ve seen one in Olungchungola there was one green. Like probably 200 feet of green prayer flag flying. Sometimes you’ll see white prayer flags, you will see vertical prayer flags as well but I know for me they are one of the highlights of this visit to the Himalayas and very special part of being here in Nepal. So that is the rest and relaxation, R&R, rest day report from the great big walk day 27. We don’t have another rest day for 10 days so we’re all glad to have clean happy dry laundry, clean happy dry feet and mostly clean happy dry (inaudible). Hope you’re having a great day out there. Hope you’re doing some walking and we will catch you tomorrow from find your fit friday. Take care. Bye bye!

Total Steps for TA:  4 381 steps, 27 floors

Total Steps for Marian: 3646 steps, 26 floors

Total Distance for TA: 2.9 km

Total Distance for Marian: 2.5 km

Great Big Walk acknowledges the support of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Quick Start Fund for Public Engagement in making these updates from the field possible.