davethegrinch.net

Dave says:

So the saying around here goes: ‘The Nepalis invented trekking’. It is inevitable that
one’s trip to Nepal will, at some point, involve trekking. It comes in many shapes and
sizes from a ‘short’ five day excursion to a ‘Into Thin Air’ style Mt Everest challenge.
Depending on your fitness level, budget and willingness to risk your life, there is a
trek for you. Sarah having never trekked for longer than 2 1/2 consecutive days before,
thought hreself plenty adventurous enough by going with the “short” 5 day trek to
Poone Hill in the Annapurna range but before she knew it, she was hooked and we signed up for the “intermediate length” 12 day expedition through the Langtang region as well.

But first, a word on the practicalities:

The trekking industry in Nepal is probably the most organized of any industry in the
country. There are plenty (in fact an excessive number) of trekking agencies in
Kathmandu who contract plenty of government certified guides who will, in turn, hire
plenty of porters who will quite happily carry all your baggage to the plenty of
teahouses en-route that serve plenty of piping hot and carb rich meals for plenty of
sore-footed tourist. One can choose to pay a flat rate per day to the agency and go ‘all-
inclusive’ or pay just for the manpower and then pay for accommodation and food as
you go. All inclusive will set you back about $30 each per day and just paying for the
manpower is $13 a day per guide and $7 a day per porter. Food and lodging runs
about $7 each per day. Of course, with enough money you can do what ever you
want. We saw groups of twelve tourists with an entourage of twenty guides, sub-
guides, porters, cooks – they hiked in and then took a helicopter out, leaving the
entourage to hike the three days out with all their bags and equipment. There is a
hierarchy built into the system. Cooks aspire to be porters who aspire to be guides
who aspire to one day own their own agency. But, for as structured as it all sounds, it
actually turned out to be very relaxed and informal. It’s as close to how it must have
felt in the 1950′s considering the golden age of such boys-own adventures has now
passed and peaks (pun intended) as one of the best ‘tourist’ experiences we’ve had so
far.

So that’s the setup. Over to Sarah who will tell you, our faithful readers, what it feels
like to trek at an altitude of 2.6 miles above sea level.

Sarah says:

Oh yeah, we’ve hiked the Himalayas. What a spectacular experience. I will do my
best to convey the splendor but really, you should all just book your next holiday to
Nepal and experience it for yourself because it truly is mind blowing to see these
mountains with your own eyes. (Just a bit of personal background: the 2 1/2 day
hike mentioned above was not what I’d call a fun experience and I pretty much
whined the entire time. And not just because we were hiking in late spring along the
trail with the highest concentration of bears in America and I was on the look out for
Bear City at every turn. Hiking is hard and I was tired and my feet were tired and I
was kinda bored. So…..needless to say, though I agreed that you can’t come to Nepal
and NOT do some trekking in the Himalayas, I wasn’t really looking forward to the 5
days, which is by the way the shortest duration on offer.)

Nepal makes it very easy to hike for very long periods of time. They will carry your
bags for you! And copious amounts of perfect hiking food, hot and ready in 20
minutes is available virtually every 2 hours along the trail! How it worked for us was
this: our first day of trekking began by taking a cab to a fairly remote mountain
village, getting out of the cab, strapping on our bags and the walking began. We were
*instantly* in the most beautiful surrounding. Lush greens, a magnificent river of
crystal clear glacier water flowing over stunning rock formations, one water fall after
another, and jaw dropping mountain views. You could tilt your head all the way back
and still barely see the tops of some of these peaks. We shared the trail with many a
mule train, each wearing a bell decorated in Nepali embroidery to sound their
approach. We also shared the trail with local Nepali village people making their way
into the mountains to deliver supplies like bottled water and fire wood. Sure the
mules carried a lot but, let me tell you, so did the people. On their heads, on their
backs, on their backs but strapped to their heads…it was *amazing* to see how much
these people can carry and all while wearing flip-flops.

Before too long we’d enter a small mountain village where one building had been
turned into a guesthouse and eatery suitable for tourists. The Nepali tourist board
would have gone in and taught the people proper hygiene and food handling so that
they could work as hoteliers. The guesthouses were rustic but adorable. Most were
exactly the same: a large dining hall and a separate building for rooms, toilets and
showers. The walls didn’t always meet the ceilings, the windows didn’t always keep
the cold air out and the toilet was sometimes outside and down the hall, but
everything was always clean and the beds were pretty darn comfortable!

The food menu in the entire Himalayan mountain range is exactly the same as it’s
governed by the tourist board: banana porridge, Tibetan bread (sometimes it’s like a
beignet or donut without the sugar, sometimes it’s like naan), mixed macaroni
(vegetables, egg, cheese), mixed fried rice, mixed spaghetti, mixed mashed potatoes,
and of course, the house specialty and also the best choice:

DAL BHAT!!! Dal Bhat is the only menu item on the planet, I think, where it’s
customary for you to get seconds. The deal is, they bring you out your plate of rice
and curried vegetables and lentil soup and then like 10 minutes later they come
around and as you if you want more of anything. Amazing!

The must-try dessert item is called Snicker Roll – or sometimes Snacker Rool – which
is basically a snickers bar wrapped in Tibetan bread and kind of fried. Ummm, don’t
laugh, it’s good. And of course there’s always delicious milk tea. Dudh chiya. Rich
and sweet. yum.

So we got into a rhythm with our guide and our porter of getting up around 6am,
hiking by 7am, two hours later, tea break, two hours later Dal Bhat, two hours later
another tea break, two hours later, hiking done! And we’d settle into our next
guesthouse for the night and for more Dal Bhat. On our 3rd day we arose at 4am to
hike up to Poone Hill, the piece-de-resistance of this particular hiking trail. I tend to
think that sunrises are perhaps a bit overrated and sleeping is such a wonderful thing
but this was absolutely one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. As the sun
rose, the reward for hiking up to an elevation of 10,000ft came into wondrous view:
the Annapurna peaks. A 180 degree view of the most splendid snow covered peaks
I’d ever seen and it was also the highest elevation I’d ever been at.

Of course to get at that elevation you have to do some serious hiking – our 2nd day
was nothing but UP for 7 hours. And we were right at the start of the rainy season so
every day at precisely 2pm, the skies would open and we’d witness incredible
mountain storms with golf-ball size hail, thunder and lightening. But I can’t really
even say how cool it is to hike in these mountains, how awesome it is to see manmade
rice terraces deep in the mountains at 10,000ft. To see villages where people live in
these harsh mountain conditions year round.

It made us want more. I couldn’t even believe I was saying it or thinking it, but we
wanted more, we wanted longer. So when our volunteer thing didn’t work out, we
signed up for a 12 day trek in the Langtang region which is due north of Kathmandu
toward the Tibet border.

This circuit was more grueling and less commercial than Annapurna but so worth it.
These mountains!!!! Wow. Wow is all I can think of. Physically, we did alright
considering we’d never done anything even remotely this strenuous for this long ever
ever in our lives. On this trek we:

• went all the way up to about 15,000ft elevation

• we had to acclimatize

• we had to watch out for altitude sickness

• we went from about 35 degrees celciuss (95F) to 0C and back down again

• we hiked through a torrential downpour, after which we had to pluck leeches off our ankles and from our shoes and socks

• we had a group of left-over Maoists criminals try to intimidate us into giving them money and then they followed us for a few hours

• we hiked in snow

• I got 3 spider bites

• and because the 9 hour bus ride to our starting village, covering a grand distance of 75 miles, was so miserable, we just hiked ourselves all the way back to Kathmandu

• We hiked 138km/86 miles, reached an elevation of 4610m/15,120ft, over the course of the trek ascended a total of 6780m/22,248ft and descended a total of 4670m/15,32ft

Now, some of you may be wondering, “But what about Everest!!??”. Well, come to
find out, you can NOT see Mt. Everest from Kathmandu. It’s very far away. And you
can hike to Everest base camp but it’s rated as a very difficult hike, it’s several days
longer than our Langtang hike and it’s very very expensive. So, we opted not to do it.
This time. However, do you really think we’d go all the way to Nepal and not at least
see it??!!

Here she is: Mt. Everest:

Now, go climb a mountain!!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Global Travels, Nepal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.