Our trekking group ranged in age from 5 months to 80 years. Fortunately, none of the kids have exhibited any signs of illness whatsoever. Not so for the adults. It seemed all of the adults had some kind of illness (or at least a lack of appetite), so we decided to cut our trek short and head out a couple of days early.
The snow had melted below Khunde, so we made good time to Lukla (3 days trek at our kids pace). The morning we left Lukla (which is the airport used to get to/from the Khumbu), there was a fire in a lodge a couple of hundred metres from our lodge. Lukla has many lodges, and most are along the main road. Many are adjacent to each other, so fire is a major concern. Although fires are rare, there was one that occurred only half an hour's walk from Lukla in a small village a couple of days before we began our trek. It was started by a 5 year old playing with kerosene and matches and 8 adjacent houses were burnt to the ground. Only blackened, cracked (and hence useless) rocks remained.
Lukla, like every other place we visited while trekking, has no fire combatting equipement or crew. People had to organise themselves to save what they could from the burning lodge, and owners of adjacent lodges were ripping up their roofs so they could attempt to prevent the fire from spreading. Because walls are typically made of stone, fire tends to convery via the roof beams.
To get to our lodge, the fire needed to cross the road, which it was threatening to do. After a few minutes, a lodge on our side of the street was smouldering and ready to burst into flame. The lodge owner, Daputi, was very concerned, so we helped her get all her valuable / movable belongings into the back yard.
Basically, we chucked blankets, rugs, bedding etc out a first floor window onto the ground below. Hine and Tama helped move everything onto a large pile of rocks (stored for the purpose of building a large house) in the back yard.
The fire did cross the road, and two lodges started to go up in flames. However, a brave group of locals battled it by ripping up roofing iron and dousing the flames using one saucepan of water at a time. After about 20 minutes they managed to control the flames and save our side of the street.
Luckily, the lodge that the original fire started in was not adjacent to other lodges, so the fire did not spread, helped by the wind blowing in the only direction where buildings did not lie. Only one lodge and 3 adjacent houses were lost. Nobody lost their lives, and the lodge owner had enough time to retrieve their jewellery and money.
We caught our plane to Kathmandu just as the fire was beginning to recede.
