Nepal

In October, we went to Nepal.  It’s a life long dream for me to go there.  Beyond youthful aspirations that I would climb Mt. Everest, Nepal has always held an alure for me.  When Jackson said 18 months ago, “hey Dad, I’d like to go to Nepal” I was all in.

We flew to Kathmandu (yes, Bob Seger was ringing in my head several times during this trip) through Bangkok.  After a quick overnight in the Hyatt, we headed back to the airport the next day to fly to the smaller city of Pokhara, nestled in the Annapurna region in North-Central Nepal.

You can see from the chaotic scene at the airport that most of the traffic is headed to points outside of Nepal to get out into the mountains for trekking.  Just a short 30 minutes flight on Buddha air for us, and we arrived in Pokhara.

This picture from Pokhara airport is taken with Machapuchare (“Fishtail”) mountain in the background, a pyramid spire nearly 7,000 meters high.  Tikendra, our main guide for the trip,is in the picture with Kirsten and the kids.

We then jumped into a tour van and drove about 90 minutes to on a windy and slightly maintained road to a small village called Kande, the starting point of our trek.  We jumped out of the van, the sherpas put our stuff on their backs, or actually their heads (more on that later), and off we went.  You can see below us beginning the walk, on a trail right out of town.

The trek we took is part of a larger one known as the Annapurna Circuit.  Per Wiki Travel: “This circuit is considered one of the best treks in the world…the scenery is outstanding…this trek takes you through distinct regional scenery of rivers, flora, fauna and above all – mountains.”

This is one of the maps along the trail, representing just a small part of the overall circuit (it’s possible to take 6+ week treks in this region).  You can follow our trail in the picture below.  From Kande, we went on the trail to Pothana – Deurali – Bhichuk – Tolka – Landruk – (crossed the Modi river) – Kimi – Ghandruk – Kimche – Syauli Bazar – Chimrong – Birethanti – Nayapol.

More than walking on a trail, the trekking in Nepal is more like walking on a bumpy sidewalk since the entire length of it is laid with stone.  A bumpy sidewalk with a heck of a lot of stairs that is.  Picture yourself doing 4 hours a day on a very old Stairmaster and I think you’ll start to get the idea.

We trekked a couple of hours, to a small village called the “Australian Camp”.  This village had a few tea houses (basically the motels of Nepal), and our crew pitched our tents in the big grass area in front of this particular tea house.

They met us with a hot lemon drink and fed us a late lunch.  You can also see Tikendra here filtering water for us (twice a day he would fill up our bottles, using a state of the art filter and then putting tablets in to make sure all the bacteria were taken care of).  This is a critical part of the process to keep healthy while on the trail – both keeping hydrated to avoid altitude issues and drinking clean water.

Here is a view inside the tea house where we ate dinner, and then did some reading.  Jackson didn’t know it, but a mouse ran up the wall behind him just after I took this picture .  You can notice from the lights that there was electricity throughout this trek, but often it would flicker and even go out for short bursts of time.

Due to the 2 hours and 15 minute time difference from Nepal to Singapore, Jackson woke up awfully early the next day, so he and I got to see the sunrise.  We were met by the water buffalo you see, and had to nudge ourselves around them to get to a good viewing spot.  We saw these water buffalo prevalently throughout the trek, a key part of the ecosystem that drives life in the mountains (and also a key reason the water is so polluted, as becomes evident from the immense amount of cow pucky on the trail).

From our camp site (you can see the blue tents on the bottom right) we had a gorgeous view of the sun coming up and touching on the top of the mountains (in this case, Annapurna South, another 7,000+ meter peak).  It was stunning.

The cows decided that we had a better viewpoint, and the grass was in fact greener on our side of the path, so they came up to check us out.  It’s a little weird standing next to animals so big with horns that look like that.  Jackson wasn’t too sure.

When you’re sitting with a view like that in the bright and warm sun, it doesn’t even matter that the coffee is instant.

And thus ends the first blog entry of our Nepal trip.

-Mark

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