Nepal about it

We arrived in crazy Kathmandu and were promptly picked up by the delightful folk at Take on Nepal and ferried through the crazy traffic to our hotel in Thamel.

We met Som on our arrival, the director of Take on Nepal. He took us out to dinner at Yangling, a famous Nepalese restaurant for incredible chili momos (Nepalese dumplings) and a lot of good chats about how Take on Nepal was formed. Som grew up in a small village called Batase a few hours from Kathmandu (more on that later), which had no school past primary. Wanting to go to high school, Som moved to Kathmandu to board with a family who instead forced him to work for them. He managed to return to Batase a few years later, but couldn't do the enormous trek to the nearest high school every day. He ended up working as a porter for a company, then freelancing as a guide and managed to learn multiple langauges. This led to an opportunity to study in Cairns, Australia. While there, he met his now wife and they developed Take on Nepal as a way to fund a school and boarding house/orphanage at Batase. Som lives in Australia, but spends most of the tourist season in Nepal - we felt very privileged to have caught him for dinner!

A few hours later Grace had arrived from New York and Kristen and Grant had arrived from Hong Kong and we were all ensconced in a beer garden! All three of their bags had been lost during their stopovers (who would have thought a cancelled and then hastily rebooked Sichuan Air flight from Chengdu with a stopover in Tibet would have been the safest option for your luggage??) but with assurances it would arrive before we headed off on our hike, we could set into the beers and some long overdue chats.

The next day involved much preparation for our hike, the Manaslu Circuit - a nine day hike (plus one acclimatisation day) of approximately 177 km around Mt Manaslu, the eighth highest peak in the world, including the 5100 m Larke Pass. We had to rent sleeping bags and walking poles, buy rain gear (again, more on that later), purchase crampons, snacks and various other necessaries to survive an expedition into the Himalayas. Thankfully we had a glorious evening on the roof terrace to unwind, followed by a dinner of dal bhat with Anil our guide, and Bijay and Sanu our porters who were to be our amazing team on our hike!

We set off bright and early, with a whole day of driving to get to Sotikhola - the start point of the trek. A very bumpy road - fairly standard for Nepal as we would find out... saw us arrive mid afternoon in time to settle into our first teahouse accommodation overlooking the Buri Gandaki River, sink some more beers and take a paddle in the local waterfall.

Finally, we started walking! Day one was a nice 15 km walk up the Buri Gandaki river valley, starting with a delightful mule traffic jam over our first of many swing bridges.

With perfect weather and only a few hundred metres of elevation over the course of the day, we had plenty of energy to finish the day with a swim at the village pool and be beaten at Nepalese card games all evening by Anil, Sanu and Bijay in our teahouse in Machhakola that night!

Day two was just as hot and sunny, but with more elevation and covering 23 km. We passed through heaps of remote Gurung villages being supplied by seemingly endless teams of mules, over terrain that changed dramatically from a steep river gorge to a wide delta-like area by the late afternoon.

We also saw a lot of very interesting workplace health and safety practices as locals worked to widen the track into a road to provide access to these villages some time in the future!

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Also featured were plenty of massive areas of wild marijuana!

Our teahouse that evening was one of our favourites of the trip, in the medieval looking village of Jagat, with an incredible view out from their lovely garden. We tried their local cider (more like watery alcoholic porridge...) and raksi - a spirit made from millet that tastes like sake.

We had a spectacular start from Jagat, crossing a suspension bridge just outside of town with three waterfalls beneath it - there were plenty more suspension bridges to come! As we continued throughout the day, the Buddhist influence became more and more prevalent (Nepal is around 80% Hindi, which all the photos of alpine Buddhist prayer flags had misled me about my whole life...).

We had even more mule teams pass us on the trail, with some very keen to get to their destination!

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We arrived in Deng Village after 20 km of walking, at 1860 m above sea level. So far we'd only gained 1150 m of elevation over the course of three days, but we were climbing steadily and approaching some beautiful mountain views. We spent the evening playing cards and asking Anil and co about Nepal and the Nepalese language (including learning the word for donkey/stupid, which came in very handy for the rest of the trip). Grace, Kristen and I ended up drinking a few too many of the delicious Gorka beers for our own good, considering the length we had to walk the next day, but we made it work!

We had to make it work, because our fourth day was around 24 km of walking, with around 800 m of elevation (to 2630 m). We walked through some beautiful old forests and landscapes that looked quite North American to me, with beautiful views of the Ganesh Himal - a sub range of the Himalayas.

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The day's walking finished with an absolutely terrifying creep across a fresh landslide, which someone had stamped a tiny, unstable path into. We found out later that there was another way into the village, but that it took longer and Anil thought we were brave enough to face the challenge... We were pleased with his faith in us, but I think I got at least a few new grey hairs as a result.

Our accommodation at Namrung was another highlight of our teahouse stays, a series of cute log cabins with stupendous views of the mountains, with a great dining room and campfire, which was lit to celebrate the first day of the Nepali new year. It was complete with two adorable puppies and a great Nepalese film playing on the telly.

The next day was a 17 km uphill hike, which included a lot of yaks and quaint farms.

We also got our first real look at the magnificent Manaslu, which we had an incredible view of from Lho Bazar village where we had lunch.

After a long hike through a forest and over some beautiful streams and bridges, we made it to Samagaon, our home for the next two nights as we had our acclimatisation day at 3520 m.

Anil was aware that a very important lama was staying in Samagaon to preach at the time we were there, so sent Bijay and Sanu ahead (they were carrying the bags but were still majorly faster than us) to ensure we had somewhere to stay even though the village accomodation would be full of people in town to listen to the lama. They managed to find us a spot to sleep, but the hostess wasn't able to cook for us. So, Anil, Sanu and Bijay took it on themselves to make sure we had our daily momo dumplings and fried noodles and even gave us an impromptu lesson in momo making!

Samagaon was also the location of our biggest mishap of the trip. I had carried a bottle of tomato and garlic hot sauce in my bag the entire trip, on the basis that the food might be very bland. It hadn't been the case, but we thought we should use the sauce in order to justify carrying it for five long days of hiking. Alas as i opened my little backpack, I realised that the glass bottle had smashed some time that day and coated my delightful new yellow rain pants and the inside of my bag with pungent hot sauce, which Nick and I (with no help from our ungrateful friends) spent an hour cleaning with snow!

If you thought that we rested on our acclimatilsation day, you would be wrong!! We walked up to almost 4000 m over the course of the day! We walked from the village up to Pungyen Gumpa Monastery, where the lama was preaching to his followers against a beautiful mountain backdrop, including a very snowy Mt Manaslu.

Then, we continued on to an alpine meadow where Anil, Bijay and Sanu showed us the acrobatics they had practiced during their school lunches at Batase (also under an amazing mountain backdrop!) while the local yaks looked on.

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We continued on from the monastery to the beautiful, glacial Birendra Lake, named after the king of Nepal who was assisanated in 2001 in the Nepalese Royal Massacre.

We returned to Samagaon village to sleep and continue our acclimatisation at 3500 m, before heading to even higher altitudes!

We woke to a very cold morning, with snow forecast for later in the day and headed out through the glacier moraines on a 16.5 km walk to Samdo, which sits at 3875 m. It was a our first chance to try out our collective wet weather gear over our warm clothes and we were all very pleased with our rainbow presentation as a group.

The landscape was beautiful in the snow, but we were all pleased to arrive at our teahouse in Samdo, to watch the snow fall thickly all afternoon and evening while sitting around the fire playing cards and eating snickers spring rolls.

By the next morning everything was deep in snow, but we had a spectacular bluebird day for hiking.

We set off, heading past some hardy yaks and crossing small streams as we headed uphill on a short but cold 11.7 km day of hiking to Dharamsala, otherwise known as Larke base camp.

We spotted Larke Glacier on the way, and also saw multiple small avalanches from the peaks surrounding us.

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We also spotted a herd of native big horn sheep!

After only a few hours, we arrived at the spectacular Dharamsala camp, which was very cold but in incredible surroundings.

We spent the afternoon bundled in our sleeping bags staying warm and saving energy for the biggest day of the trek.

The next day was a 4:30 am start, with breakfast and our first hour undertaken by headtorch. With a short altitude puke under my belt and my crampons firmly strapped on, I was ready to take on the pass, with the light increasing by just after 5 to show us the enormous peaks surrounding us.

We climbed only 700 m from Dharamsala camp, but it felt like kilometres at such high altitude. We could be described as, at best, trudging. But with lots of stops to catch our breath and take in the unbelievable views, we continued upwards.

By 9:15 we reached Larke Pass, the highest point on our trek at 5100 m above sea level. It was a pretty amazing (and strange) feeling - I promptly burst into tears, Nick later said he felt like he was in a dream, with the altitude making reality feel a little unreal.

After some well-deserved rest with a stop to take it all in, we began our descent, which quickly deteriorated into bum slides down the deep snow, while dodging rocks.

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We were treated to a soul restoring midday noodle break at a refuge at midday, before continuing on what felt like a very long afternoon to Bhimthang - a 21 km hike that felt like twice that because of the steepness and altitude. We were exhausted when we got to the tea house at 1:30, but Anil, Bijay and Sanu immediately set to a game of football!

The next morning we woke to frozen boots and frosty grass, and started our last day of hiking surrounded by snowy peaks.

We soon descended into flowering rhododendron forests and just after lunch Anil spotted a huge troop of beautiful grey langur monkeys - almost as big as people with big white halos and long tails. It was very exciting!

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After a very long 27 km day of lugging our tired bodies downhill through forests. farms and villages, we finally made it to Dharapani Village, the end point of our trek!

We proceeded to have our first hot showers in a week followed by getting far too drunk and having impromptu karaoke with our phones in the teahouse.

The next day was a hair raising ride across cliffs and around hairpin bends far above a raging river below, while the driver chatted on the phone and steered with one hand or his knees. Kristen ended up hiding her eyes, while Anil, Bijay and Sanu enjoyed the ride from the tray of the ute!

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After a long day, we ended up back in Kathmandu, ready to shower and crash into bed! Grace left early the next morning, heading back to New York City and far fewer mountains. The rest of us did part of the Kathmandu tourist trail, visiting the famous Swayambhunath Monkey Temple. Legend has it that the monkeys are the holy descendants of the lice that crawled out of a holy pilgrim's hair while he lived on the hill. Certainly they were quite intimidating, and like lice I didn't really want them on me.

After a delicious lunch with Som, the director of Take on Nepal, we decided to take up his recommendation to visit Betase Village, where the profits from our trek were directed as well as the hometown of Som, Anil, Bijay and Sanu.

We headed out the next morning, over roads that - if possible - were even bumpier than those from Manaslu. We then spent an amazing afternoon meeting Batase families, teaching a little school to the English class (we were very bad at it), playing a very intense game of football with the children living at the hostel funded by Take on Nepal and its associated charities, and being treated to an amazing set of performances by them in the evening.

We spent the night at Som's parent's place, and then hiked with his lovely sister Phulmaya the five hours back to Kathmandu.

We treated ourselves to one last feast of Yangling chili momos and Ghorka beer, before heading to the airport the next morning for our flight to Beijing!