Everybody knows Sherpas are hardy people. After all, they are the ones who serve as porters for most expeditions to climb Himalayan peaks. They can climb with 40 or 50 kilograms on their backs.

I’m in a village, Namche Bazaar, in high Sherpa country in Nepal, somewhere around 11,700 feet in elevation. It is on the footpath to Mount Everest base camp. I’m getting a taste of how tough the Sherpas are.

I’m in an internet café and there is no heat. You can see your breath. Yesterday, after half an hour here, my fingers were blue from using the computer. I couldn’t type with my gloves on. Today, I asked – begged, really – to see if they could put in a small heater near the computer. The manager looked at me like I was Marvin Milquetoast. What a pathetic request!

They finally brought out a little heater. It is burning my left ankle. My right hand is still, well, chilled. But I can write.

Apologies for the lack of postings of late. I’m here on a writing project that is taking some time.

No road connects this region to the rest of Nepal. One has to walk in, or fly in, or do both. I and a companion landed in Lukla, which is lower in a valley and the closest airstrip to this region. You can sense from the photo that the airstrip is anything but flat. It is angled sharply on a hillside, with a wall at one end. Only short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft can arrive.

Nepal just announced last week that the airstrip would be renamed the Sir Edmund Hillary airport, after the late New Zealand mountaineer who was the first to conquer Everest along with his Sherpa companion, Tenzing Norgay.

If Tenzing Norgay were still alive, I’m sure he wouldn’t be requesting a pathetic little heater just because the internet café is a frigid 40 degrees Fahrenheit.