Ultimate Nepal 2012

 This is a blog for everyone who came to Nepal with Ultimate Travel in Feb/March 2012.  Namaste Rowan and Ines, Sarah and Jonathan, Ange and Nige, Mark, Henny and Sara, Philippa and Nick, Iris, Helen and Danny, Dom and Sam.  You were all great company and what an amazing time we had in this beautiful country.  Many thanks to Rowan for his unflappable organisation and luggage finding abilities and huge thanks to Iris for making sure everyone was happy and having the best possible time.

We took the overnight flight to Delhi on 23rd February.  I don't think any of us got much sleep and I have no idea why airlines wake passengers up two hours before landing, but when I opened the window blind and saw miles and miles of empty mountainous country that Rowan later identified as the Hindu Kush I was pleased not to have missed it.

We arrived in Delhi and despite clearing security at Heathrow had to join further queues to be patted down by distracted security guards, leaving no time to explore interesting looking shops in a very modern terminal before the flight to Kathmandu.  

Impressions of flying into Kathmandu.  A lone American from LA could barely contain his excitement at the thought of spending the flight sitting on Iris’s lap because there didn’t seem to be enough seats on the plane.  We flew over mountains, steep wooded valleys with tiny farms perched above terraced fields.  Then the city, spread across the floor of a huge valley, combining farmland and apartment blocks in a patchwork of browns and greens.  Driving through Kathmandu's streets to reach the Gokarna Forest Resort was an instant immersion into a very different world.  People were everywhere, on foot, with impressively large bundles on their backs, on motorbikes, bicycles, squashed inside highly decorated buses and lorries, all competing for limited space on very heavily potholed roads.  

The air was thick with dust and traffic fumes.  Complicated wiring hung in loops from telegraph poles like skeins of wool, someone made a joke about internet access.  Friends sat happily in dusty groups on the ground or on un-railed balconies.  Tiny shops sold provisions, stalls were abundant with fresh produce.  There were vivid colours everywhere despite the haze and pollution.

After nearly an hour we arrived at Gokarna, which is just outside Kathmandu, on the edge of a forest and a great place to escape the noise and pollution of the city.  The hotel has an excellent 18 hole golf course, presided over by hundreds of surprisingly well behaved monkeys.  We unpacked into spacious rooms, showered and met for drinks in the bar.  I wonder whether seventeen English people demonstrating the obvious benefits of drinking large quantities of alcohol to the other guests in the hotel, who were mainly the attendees at a water conference, featured in their subsequent discussions.

25^th February

Today was about sightseeing in Kathmandu.  Our guide, Poobaram, took one look at us, correctly ascertained our combined attention span was likely to be short and handed out pamphlets about the area around Durbar Square, as we stood to reasonable attention in the oldest Hindu temple in Nepal, constructed from the wood of one enormous tree and open on all sides.  Then he announced theatrically that if we were extremely lucky we might be able to see a living Hindu Goddess.  It’s apparently a great honour for a family to have a daughter chosen at the age of three to perform this role, which continues into her early teens and ends with her first menstruation.  As we waited patiently in a small courtyard with elaborately carved windows, perched upon by pigeons, worshippers arrived to play homage to the current small person, aged seven.  The child finally appeared briefly at a central window and looked down on us disdainfully.  She was beautifully decorated and as petulant as a Goddess should be.  There was a lot of speculation later about who was likely to be a good enough husband for her after such an extraordinarily indulgent childhood. 

Then to the Royal Palace, where most signs read ‘Do not enter’, or ‘This was where the King’s Land Rover once stood’.  And after managing not to succumb to a variety of salesmen selling belts, beads and tiny beautifully carved chess games for practically nothing, we walked through crowded streets to the beautiful and peaceful Dechenling Garden Restaurant for a lunch of dumplings, which some of us treated with suspicion, while we all used the services of a money changer that Rowan had cleverly found who charged better than street rates. 

From lunch it was back into the coach for a short drive through fields sown with mustard to the mediaeval city of Bhaktapur, the cultural capital of Nepal.  We walked along narrow dusty streets, passed women sitting in doorways knitting woolly hats and socks; we visited a small art gallery where the most intricate paintings were being made using jewel like colours; we walked up the steep steps of the Siddhi Laxmi temple and had vertigo at the top; in one palace I looked through a forbidden door into a garden with a perfect grey pony grazing on the other side.  There was an open-air pottery, more shops selling vegetables and spices. We needed more time, we were jet lagged and we hadn’t even begun the challenge of the trek.

For photographers this is the most photogenic country imaginable because the Nepalese are so good looking, their children adorable, their old people bright eyed and superbly wrinkled, their clothing brightly coloured and their chickens and cattle free to choose a life in the city.  All you need is a good zoom lens and occasional help later from Photoshop and you will produce pictures worthy of National Geographic magazine. 

 

26^th February

This was the beginning of our walk.  Philippa told me quietly the night before that Lukla airport has the world’s most interesting safety record, which made me anticipate our flight with varying degrees of excitement through the night.  We’d been given smaller bags to bring with us and we repacked into them, leaving clothes behind at the hotel.  We were up early at 4.30 am to catch the sunrise and hopefully the least turbulent flight to Lukla. 

A trusty twin Otter, or Twotter, waited for us at Kathmandu airport with two pilots who looked confident. The flight was only slightly turbulent towards the end, but the distractions of the landscape we flew over were immense.  An emergency landing anywhere would have been impossible, every valley was steep sided, roads petered out shortly after leaving the valley of Kathmandu, there were more tiny farms linked by narrow tracks, and lots of thickly wooded hillsides.

Flying into the sun must have been challenging enough but landing on a 450 metre long runway that ends in a mountain requires commitment.  The pilots may have done it before but we hadn’t and we shakily gathered our bags before drinking calming tea in a small café decorated with laughing buddhas and pictures of the Dalai Lama and meeting our Sherpas (Karma, Sonam and Pasang) and the dzos, small, four legged, shaggy, friendly looking mammals, the result of a divine union between a yak and a cow, who would carry our luggage for the next six days.   

We walked through Lukla, resisting the familiar temptations of Starbucks, an Irish Pub and shops selling equipment for potential assaults on Everest, through an archway wishing us a good trek and headed off for our first destination at Phakding. 

  

To begin with the walk was benign, chatty and downhill, through cultivated, terraced fields and delightful, small villages, with valleys stretching away into blue oblivion, as we learnt to say Namaste to everyone we met.  

There were prayer flags strung overhead, donkeys, small cows, a child who borrowed walking poles while we drank water and used them to assert his control over a small calf. 

 

We crossed the first of many metal suspension bridges over a deep valley, walked passed a landslide which, with the lubrication of monsoon rain, had claimed several buildings.  We passed the first of many prayer wheels and spun it until the bell above it chimed and after a short first walk of about two hours we arrived at our first Yeti Mountain Lodge for lunch and a long afternoon sleep on electric blankets or more cleverly, outside in spring sunshine before dinner.  

The lodges we stayed in were all part of a chain of Yeti Mountain Lodges, which is useful if you leave anything behind, because they can usually get items returned to you.  You don’t need to bring shoes because they all provide crocs, hideous but essential in many of the bathrooms because the floors early in the year are terribly cold.  The electric blankets on all the beds were wonderful and as good as a hot bath after a long day walking.  The lodges usually have hairdryers available and there’s hot water, though balancing the hot and cold water in the showers, there are no baths, is a dark art.  Your reward, once showered is to gather round a wood burning stove at around 6 and have hot rum to drink before supper.

27^th February

We were very fortunate to have the well defined contours of an Alpha male geologist with us, without whom we would never have known that immediately outside the lodge was a perfect example of a medial moraine, who’s whitish screed made it feel like waking up in the Alps on a skiing trip.  It was about as cold too.  From the warmth of Kathmandu in the mountains you need layers which you peel off and reapply as regularly as mandatory suncream. And suncream works! Several of us were delighted to find our guides thought we were between ten and twenty years younger than we actually are!  

We knew today would be a long one ending in a steep two hour uphill climb to Namche Bazaar and woke up at 6.30 for breakfast of porridge and delicious omelettes at 7.  The first two to three hours were easy, measured in conversations and the scenery was pretty along the Dudh Kosi river.  We had a delicious lunch on the sunlit terrace of the Monjo Yeti Mountain lodge of noodle soup followed by chips, pasta and coleslaw.  All the food in the mountains is heavily laced with carbohydrates and I was a bit disappointed not to eat more typically Nepalese food, but perhaps they wanted our stomachs to feel at home, or at least at a chip shop. The men in our group had a good laugh watching women hoeing a field below the lodge, while their husbands and sons casually tossed potatoes into the holes they made and seemed slightly disappointed when the roles were reversed.  

I think we could all have stayed at Monjo happily for the rest of the afternoon, or our lives, but if we had we would have missed some of the most beautiful scenery of the trip.  The sky was clear and sunlight jittered off the peaks of far away mountains as we walked through the entrance to the Sagarmatha National Park, where our trekking permits were checked.  While this happens there’s a small, very informative visitor’s centre beside the ticket office and it’s an excellent idea to visit it quickly because it explains local customs like walking around stupas or chortens in a clockwise direction and which way prayer wheels like to be spun and simple courtesies like asking people if they mind being photographed.  Unfortunately I only discovered this visitor’s centre on our return and happily photographed almost everyone we met….

 

Beyond the archway into the Sagarmatha Park we walked along dappled wooded pathways beside the river and over suspended bridges that challenged several of us with vertiginous experiences, made far more exciting when rocked by Helen. All along the route at various intervals were dzos and mules carrying every provision imaginable and also people with enormous bundles on their backs.   

Try to avoid walking to Namche on a Friday because you’ll be sharing the path with everyone travelling uphill to Saturday’s market.  

It was very dusty and the scarves we’d been given at the beginning of the trip turned most of us into bandits. The final suspension bridge before our path headed resolutely skywards was the most spectacular, it was very high over a gorge with the prayer flags tied to it blowing fiercely in the wind.  On the other side we had to descend unforgettably steep steps with a sheer drop at their turn before beginning the long climb to Namche. 

The route we walked along is the ancient salt trade route between Nepal and Tibet.  I wondered whether the prayer flags strung across the valleys were supplications for prosperity and thought that if they were, prosperity had certainly arrived, brought in by trekkers paying to walk along paths that had been used for centuries by Tibetans and Nepalese. 

Once again our Team Leader, Rowan, had thought of everything, we stopped half way to Namche for tea, biscuits and oranges that became more and more expensive as their rarity increased (understandable since they had been carried on foot all the way from Kathmandu).  At this half way point we saw Everest and its surrounding mountains, Lhotse Ama Dablam and Thamserku for the first time. Everest was majestic and unmistakable, a plume of cloud streaming at speed from it’s south-eastern face.  The climb required stamina and it didn’t stop when we reached Namche because our lodge was high above the rest of the town. It was a long way and our legs hadn’t yet acclimatised to what was required of them, but it was so wonderful to arrive to sweet lemon tea and biscuits, to take off dusty boots and to crawl into bed with an electric blanket already on.

28^th February

Today began at dawn, we split into two groups with one going to see a Sherpa village and visit a hospital and school and the other walking to the monastery at Tengboche monastery and back again.  

I was in the Tengboche party and we left early along an icy path above the lodge.  The views of distant mountain ranges shimmered in the early morning light, closer, an iridescent Nepalese pheasant, which is more like a peacock than a pheasant, scratched in the dust of a nearby field, as we followed the path which wound round the hills between us and the monastery, which looked deceptively close until you realised how many hills we had to circumnavigate.  A lone horseman, on what must have been a mission of global significance, galloped passed us, reins flapping, at top speed. 

After a while we passed an old man on a canvas chair who seemed to have decided that where he sat was the entrance to his own park and for this he should be remunerated. 

At around eleven we began to walk downhill, knowing that the pleasure of this was likely to be brief, crossed a small river and then started the steep walk up to Tengboche. 

  

All the paths in the Himalayas are uneven, with boulders, tree roots and loose stones and you have to keep reminding yourself to look up because your natural instinct is to watch where your feet are going to tread next.   

  

The scenery is breath taking, the trees as gnarled as ancient olives, the mountains colossal and magnificent, seemingly on a far grander scale than those in the Alps. With frequent stops to catch our breath, take photographs and take off or put on layers of clothing, we arrived at last at the gatehouse to the monastery, feeling rather like this painting that was on one of its walls. 

Shortly after us a man carrying a sofa and a wardrobe on his back walked past. The Nepalese are incredible, small and strong seems to be the necessary combination for life at altitude, all the animals we saw were a smaller build too.  We must have seemed like over equipped giants with unnecessarily large noses to everyone we met.

The monastery at Tengboche is on a plateau that stretches away to the north east in the direction of Everest base camp.  We were told that by walking to Tengboche we had done the hardest part of the walk to the base camp, we believed it and it was exciting to think of all the people in whose footprints we had been treading.  The monastery is highly decorated externally and has a small village supporting it.  We ate noodle soup, in a very cold lodge, served with deliciously burnt bread and bought the world’s most expensive chocolate bars before realising we’d have to leave because the weather, which to this point had been perfect and clear, was definitely changing.

 

It was a long walk home.  We tried to offer encouragement to other people walking up to the monastery but it was difficult to estimate how much longer they’d have to go.   Our ascent had taken us about two and a half hours, amazingly we were down in half an hour.  On the way back I thought it would rain but instead it began snowing.  Finally at the first stupa we had passed in the morning we were met by a smiling Rowan, who had been to the Sherpa village.  Lemon tea back at Namche had never tasted so good.

It may have been back at the lodge that night or earlier that the marathon games of Hearts began, but every evening after dinner the girls, docile, sweet and gentle during the day became tigresses intent on the competitive business of winning as few tricks as possible.  

29^th February

It snowed during the night, so when we opened our curtains we were in another world.  Today we walked to Thame via Khumjung village.  We began with the steep hill behind Namche leading to Syangboche airstrip and from there through a beautiful wooded landscape, passed two helicopters taking off, and a deserted hotel in a beautiful position, built by Japanese, a quality minimalist building sadly unusable because of its high altitude.    

We dawdled through the trees taking photographs in glittering snow, to the Sherpa village of Khumjung.  Many Nepalese desert their villages during the harsh winters for Kathmandu, returning in the spring and this large village had the atmosphere of a ghost town, though with a well attended, Edmund Hilary sponsored school and a hospital. 

From there up over wide steps built seemingly for processions and down the other side of the hill, along one of the longest prayer or Mani walls in Nepal.  These walls are made from individually carved stone tablets inscribed with the words from prayers. 

Walking through woods to Thame, Sonam suddenly stopped and pointed out wild mountain goats, looking like enormous long haired caterpillars grazing in clearings on the lower slopes of the hills.

We had lunch that day in one of the prettiest Sherpa villages we visited, Thamo, at wonderful box of a mountain lodge called Maya.  Lunch was Tibetan bread with a stew of potatoes and vegetables and very good. We joined an Australian family some of us had met at Tengboche, a husband and wife, two children and a guitar.  Maya lodge seemed a special place to them and I asked if they were celebrating something.  We later found out that what they were remembering was the conception at the lodge of their eldest son twenty years ago, who had recently died.  They were, as they explained poignantly, ‘A family of five learning how to become a family of four’.  

Walking up to Thame the landscape became more and more desolate and remote, there were fewer trees, we were getting higher, then just when you’d think you’re miles from anywhere, and a strange anxiety starts eating at the edges of your consciousness, suddenly, out of nowhere, comes a crowd of pink cheeked school children throwing snowballs at each other. 

 

We crossed the river over a deep ravine.  Under the bridge were rock formations that morphed into faces in our photographs; close to the bridge were religious paintings on the wall of the cliff, perhaps reassuring the children crossing that the trolls below wouldn’t get them.

We reached Thame late that afternoon, walking through another gateway preceded by a landscape reminiscent of a mature Japanese garden, an icy river splashing over huge boulders, old evergreen oaks and pine trees, a scattering of snow over it all.

That evening, at the Yeti Lodge after supper we were entertained by our waitresses who sang atonally to us while shuffling their feet and wearing the most spectacular fur lined hats.  They looked utterly miserable until we clapped and joined in.

1^st March

Thame at the beginning of March is very cold, at the lodge there was only hot water between 5 and 6 in the evening and a bowl of water for washing our faces in the morning, but it’s a magical place and I felt this strongly as we walked to the monastery above the settlement the next morning, initially through fields separated by walls a boulder thick that somehow didn’t fall over.  Perhaps no ice could form inside them and push them apart.   

An eagle with a massive wing span flew along what is supposed to be the longest prayer wall in Nepal leading up to the monastery, very close to our path.  There are stupas at intervals along the way and information for visitors in framed cases.  The basic structure of a chorten or stupa consists of a square foundation symbolising the earth, a dome symbolising water and thirteen tapering steps - steps of enlightenment which also symbolise fire.  These steps lead to a kind of parasol, symbolising the wind, topped with the twin symbol of the sun and the moon.   

Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum…. The Tibetan Buddhist chant repeated itself in my head that morning in the cold sunshine.   

Nearing the monastery we passed a solar cooker outside someone’s house and Philippa and I touched the pot sitting in its centre, it was very hot.

At the monastery was one ancient monk and we were told a Rinpoche, though he wasn’t around.  The monk was obviously used to being photographed and earning a good fee in return, the view was beautiful to the south with strange cloud formations rising like cartoons of steam billowing from a train above the peaks of the mountains.

The party split with some people feeling the need for higher altitudes, I started to walk down slowly and alone to let the spirit of the place sink in.  It was a transcendental experience, I felt close to other worlds in those mountains, and closer to heaven on earth than I have ever been.

Some people waited at the monastery while the adventurous walked up to 4,200 metres. We had lunch that day back at the lodge at Thame and then retraced our steps to Namche.

2^nd March

And so began our retreat from the mountains.  Since it was Friday, absolutely everything was being brought to Saturday’s market at Namche.  As we walked down the hillside we passed the world, his wife and all their animals and anything else with legs, carrying goods to market.  This path was the Nepalese equivalent of a motorway.

After our descent we took a different route along the banks of the river, sat for a while on a boulder strewn promontory, ate more chocolate, wished for red wine, French bread, camembert and striped red and white tablecloths, and continued up the slope to the entrance of the Sargamartha Park; into the visitor’s centre we should have visited at the beginning; along, along, step after step, remembering previous conversations, finally arriving at the first Lodge we had stayed at for lunch. 

Then on and on back to Lukla and finally, after some trickery held Helen and I back retrieving her walking poles, through the first archway that had wished us a good trek.  Needless to say the boys got there first…

The Lukla Yeti Lodge was not expecting visitors so early in the season and so may be forgiven for dead electric blankets, light bulbs and few heaters working but we didn’t mind, we were exhausted, enlightened and excited about returning to civilisation the next day.

3^rd March

We all felt happier about taking off from Lukla than we had about landing.  A downward sloping runway and then away into the early morning haze, although flying at the same height as some of the farms is an unusual experience.

Back in Kathmandu there was a demonstration because a road with many illegal, though highly profitable shops along it, was being widened, necessitating mass demolition.  We ended up taking a different route back to Gokarna along the banks of the rubbish strewn Bagmati River.  At the hotel, Iris had thoughtfully booked appointments at the spa and after a buffet lunch in the gardens, that afternoon several of us had the best massages we have ever experienced, before feeling revived enough to go shopping.

This was made slightly more challenging by many shops in Kathmandu being closed on Saturday, but we managed to find some that were open and these include Mahaguthi, which sells fair trade crafts in Lalitpur (mahaguthi.org), where you could choose between scarves made from cashmere or a more unusual scratchy fabric made from stinging nettles.  We ended up in the bar of The Dwarika Hotel (dwarikasgroup.com).  It has beautiful Nepalese architecture in a series of elegant courtyards and promises to offer guests a ‘regal experience’.

4^th March

Our last day.  We were all on various shopping missions.  Mine was to find a book on Tibetan Buddhism and presents for people at home.  We shopped for more cashmere, hats, precious stones and masks.  Kathmandu is a shopper’s paradise, it’s inexpensive and fun if you enjoy bargaining.  Just be careful about the ATM machines.  I chose mine because it was presided over by a friendly policeman, or at least a man dressed as a policeman.  At the time only the fourth machine agreed to give me any cash, but meanwhile all the others successfully extracted it from my bank account.

Several of us shopped in Thamel, where you can find everything and I highly recommend buying an inexpensive entry ticket into the Garden of Dreams when you need a break.  It’s opposite the SAARC Building and is open daily from 9 am until 10 pm.  It’s a haven of tranquillity, with flower beds, lawns, ponds and benches to sit on and has restaurants.

While we were gathering, some of the hunters we left behind played golf at Gokarna.  We met them on our return for club sandwiches at the Golf Club.

5^th March

Another early morning start, but our flight was still delayed into Delhi.  We felt like royalty running through Delhi airport, being taken through all the short cuts to the awaiting Jet Airways plane to London.

I thought I’d had enough of adventures for a while but as we flew home over Afghanistan and Kabul, Rowan and I looked at each other and said; ‘Let’s go there, that looks exciting.’