The twin-bedded room you get at 2800 meters in Namche Bazaar looks nothing like the plywood cubicle you sleep in at Lobuche Base Camp. Tea houses evolved as trekking lodges, not hotels — thermal efficiency matters more than acoustics, which is why walls are thin enough to hear your neighbor's cough and thick enough to hold heat when paired with a yak-dung stove in the dining hall. Below 3000 meters you get an attached bathroom with a western toilet and a bucket flush. Above Namche the bathroom moves down the hall and becomes communal. Above Tengboche you see squat toilets more often than seated ones. Toilet paper disappears from tea house supply above Namche entirely — you carry your own or you adapt to the bucket-and-tap method used across Nepal.
Hot showers exist through solar heating up to roughly 3900 meters when weather cooperates. A shower at Tengboche Monastery costs 500 rupees if the sun hit the panels that afternoon. Above Dingboche hot water for washing means a basin of boiled water you pay for separately. At Gorak Shep no one showers. The menu board at Lukla lists thirty items. At Dingboche it lists twelve. At Lobuche it lists eight, all carbohydrate-based, because kitchens at altitude run on kerosene hauled by porter or yak, and complex cooking burns fuel lodges cannot afford to waste. Dal bhat — lentil soup over rice with vegetable curry and pickle — remains available at every tea house to 5000 meters because it uses shelf-stable ingredients, cooks in one pot, and delivers 800 to 1000 calories per serving. Trekkers who order pasta and fried rice at 4500 meters get smaller portions and less reliable fuel than trekkers who eat what Nepali guides eat.
Charging a phone at Namche costs 200 rupees. At Dingboche it costs 500. At Gorak Shep it costs 800 if the solar batteries hold charge. Lodges cannot generate power — they store it, and twenty trekkers arriving at 4 PM with dead devices drain a system sized for half that load. The dining room at 4200 meters has a yak-dung stove that burns from 5 PM until the last trekker goes to bed. Your bedroom has no heat. Sleeping above 4500 meters means a sleeping bag rated to minus-fifteen Celsius, a liner, and every clothing layer you carried worn to bed — thermal base layer, fleece, down jacket, wool hat. You do not undress. You add layers.