Mr Teshome said another group, which is believed to have included the Britons, had hired a car, and were travelling with a local cook, guide and policeman.
Sherpa have a number of responsibilities on Everest expeditions they cook, guide, fix ropes, and ferry climbers' gear up and down the mountain.
Cook, cook, cook, cook, cook.
The specialty of this place isn't only the decoration: Le Manger aims to help the unemployed re-enter society as they learn to cook, guided by the chefs.
Many people returning to the land are clamouring to work on the Intrepid tours – as cooks, guides and rangers.
There were also a thirty-year-old, record-breaking mountaineer named Pasang Lhamu Sherpa and her husband, Tora Akita, a physical therapist from Kathmandu; a number of Westerners; and Nepali mule men, horsemen, cooks, guides, and translators.
But it is very different, as "A Cook's Guide to Asian Vegetables" (Periplus, $24.95) points out.
Nigel Slater's Tender: Volume II, A Cook's Guide to the Fruit Garden (Fourth Estate, £30) carries on where his first volume covered vegetables.
The Safari Houses of Zambia collection (safarihouses.com), for instance, offers exclusive family cottages deep in the bush, each with a cook and guide, plus an itinerary of child-centred activities.
Acutely aware that manuals such as Hannah Wolley's The Gentlewoman's Companion and The Cook's Guide tell us more about people's fantasies about food, rather than what they actually sat down to eat, Purkiss discovers a rich store of desire and longing.
"They're better when they're cooked," our guide warns, but not before I've bitten off enough of the rubbery flesh to know that no amount of wine, garlic or parsley could redeem it.
