The flight from New Delhi to Kathmandu took around an hour, and the aerial view illustrated just how small a city it is. Arriving at the hotel at around 2pm, there was quite a short time period before meeting up with Ghelu, the sherpa who was leading the trek that was to last 18 days from today, and the rest of the group.
At the welcome meeting, Ghelu went over the itinerary, mentioned the stuff we would need for the trek, the opportunity to buy stuff later that evening, etc. The group of 9 were a mixed bunch from Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and a couple of Austalians.
After the meeting we went to the local stores to stock up on stuff; I bought a waterproof pair of trousers, as well as a pair of gators and some yaktraks. We then went to buy some dried foods (biscuits, etc) for the days ahead, and later went for a meal in a local restaurant. It hadn't occurred to me that the district of Kathmandu that we stayed, Thamel, essentially survives on meeting the needs of trekkers, with a vast number of shops selling all kinds of camping and outdoor equipment (although the plentiful 'North Face' merchandise didn't seem particularly authentic!).
We returned to the hotel at around 10pm, and gathered in the lobby at around 4.30am next day to begin the long bus journey to a place called Besi Sahar. Terrible congestion getting out of Kathmandu with a fleet of lorries conveying stuff from India, and for long periods the bus barely seemed to move, but we eventually arrived. Some stunning views of the terraced style of farming in Nepal, with relatively small plots divided upon into serried tiers of land. Apparently the soil is extremely fertle, and this way of farming allows for good crop rotation and a few decent harvests during the year. The mountains looked pretty amazing too, and there were some great river views!
After lunch and a further long bus journey, we walked for a fairly short time to Jagat and stayed in a small eco-hotel, and had our first taste of dhal bhat, which is the staple food of trekkers and is essentially lentils with rice, with some vegetables on the side. The accommodation in the tea houses was really basic. I shared rooms with another trekker from the UK, Luke. The rooms were small and it was really cold, but extra blankets were provided so it was warm enough when you got into the sleeping bag, but desperately cold when you emerged from it!
The next day we then trekked from Jagat to Bagarchhap, setting off at around 8am and reaching the destination at around 5pm, with the occasional short stops for rest and lunch. It was a tough hike, often uphill, and we covered a distance of 17 kilometres. The mountain views were spectacular, but this was a really challenging day for me physically, and I started to realise that I would have benefited from being stronger to take on board the demands of it all.
From Bagarchhap the next day we trekked to Chame, a distance of 21 kilometres, and this was when things started to go awry. It was just so physically tough and made worse by walking through heavy rain for the last couple of hours, and when we reached Chame I was feeling quite unwell and completely exhausted. Later on I wondered whether shorter treks over those 2 days would have helped me avoid falling ill, but perhaps not, although I think when you over-exert yourself, you do become a bit weaker and maybe that makes you more susceptible to illness. Without going into the gory details, I really was not well and I carried on the next day to partially walk to Pisang, which was around 16 kilometers. But when I reached Pisang I really didn't feel too great at all, and Ghelu, who was really kind and supportive throughout, concluded I had acute mountain sickness and that I needed to get down from the mountains as soon as possible.
Ghelu was constantly encouraging me, which was great, but my energy levels were so low and made worse by having completely lost my appetite, and the thought of consuming any food was too awful to contemplate. We were to have 2 days of rest in Manang to help our bodies adjust to the altitude, which Ghelu hoped would give my body time to recover and adjust, but the morning after reaching Manang (3,500 metres above sea level) things hadn't stabilised, and we decided it was best for me to come down from the mountains and so that was arranged. It felt very odd coming down, almost as if it was happening to somebody else rather than me.
Ironically the rest of the trek, albeit at higher altitudes, was nowhere near as long as those first two punishing days covering 38 kilometers.
So I ended up back in Kathmandu, was checked over in a hospital and after a few days of rest felt pretty much back to normal again, apart from feeling quite tired. Having mentally geared myself to the trek through those long days, it felt very odd to be back in Kathmandu although I was very grateful to Ghelu for arranging it all. I also felt I'd been pretty unlucky not to still be on the trek enjoying the mountain views! So I resolved to try and get up to the mountains once I'd properly recovered.
Reflecting upon it all later in Kathmandu, I felt it would have made much more sense to have arranged the trek from Nepal itself rather than the UK, which in hindsight had been quite a naive thing to do. Not only would it have been so much cheaper, but as I came to realise, treks can be organised to suit the trekker through so many trekking agencies, and being able to talk through with a good trekking agency about how far you felt able to trek each day would have been very beneficial. There were porters who conveyed our stuff from place to place, but it was equally feasible to hire a porter and guide independently through an agent.
No doubt there are definite social benefits in trekking in a larger group - and the group I was with were a really nice bunch of people - but the disadvantage is that you are kind of stuck on a treadmill with little or no flexibility in needing to cover so much distance every day in order to reach the next tea house as everything has been booked in advance and you are on a tight schedule, which creates considerable pressure. Whereas going independently, as I later discovered, you have more flexibility to take alternative routes and amend plans as you go along, without having to stick to a rigid agenda.
More generally I also wondered at the profits made by the UK-based agents, given that the guides / porters seem to receive little from the agents, and neither do the tea houses, which are extremely basic. One of the places we stayed in provided no electricity, and some had no flush toilets. Even though you're informed that the accommodation is very basic, and of course Nepal is a very low income country, I couldn't help thinking that with all that hard currency going to the trekking agent, you would hope some of it would go to helping to provide a better standard of accommodation, and supporting the people who make the trek happen, and actually when I did arrange an independent trek a few days later from Pokhara, the accommodation provided was much better than that which the group had received. There seems little incentive for the agents to give a better accommodation service, and as a trekker you have very little information about where you'll be staying or what the facilities will be like. Somebody somewhere must be making an awful lot of money, and it isn't those at the sharp end of delivering the trek!
My other bugbear was the poor porters who carried these huge bags on their heads. Each of us had a large heavy bag. It was hard for me to lift my own bag, but the porters carried 3 or 4 of these at a time with a band draped over their forehead to carry the weight. When I raised this with Ghelu, he said that they earned more by carrying more and that that was their choice, but what about the pretty pitiful wages that push them into doing that in the first place, which must increase their risk of sustaining injury? I'd much prefer to hire a porter independently to carry my stuff alone and pay them (and the guide) a decent rate. As a supposedly ethical and responsible trekking provider, I would have hoped gadventures would have enforced limits on how much the porters carried, but that did not seem to happen. The porters work so ridiculously hard, and coming on a trip like this should offer some means of enabling rich foreigners to alleviate some of their economic distress.
Oh dear, the above probably reads like a bit of a rant, and its not intended to. I suppose its only when you've had these kinds of experiences that you reflect on what's really going on and how things could be made better.
At the welcome meeting, Ghelu went over the itinerary, mentioned the stuff we would need for the trek, the opportunity to buy stuff later that evening, etc. The group of 9 were a mixed bunch from Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and a couple of Austalians.
After the meeting we went to the local stores to stock up on stuff; I bought a waterproof pair of trousers, as well as a pair of gators and some yaktraks. We then went to buy some dried foods (biscuits, etc) for the days ahead, and later went for a meal in a local restaurant. It hadn't occurred to me that the district of Kathmandu that we stayed, Thamel, essentially survives on meeting the needs of trekkers, with a vast number of shops selling all kinds of camping and outdoor equipment (although the plentiful 'North Face' merchandise didn't seem particularly authentic!).
We returned to the hotel at around 10pm, and gathered in the lobby at around 4.30am next day to begin the long bus journey to a place called Besi Sahar. Terrible congestion getting out of Kathmandu with a fleet of lorries conveying stuff from India, and for long periods the bus barely seemed to move, but we eventually arrived. Some stunning views of the terraced style of farming in Nepal, with relatively small plots divided upon into serried tiers of land. Apparently the soil is extremely fertle, and this way of farming allows for good crop rotation and a few decent harvests during the year. The mountains looked pretty amazing too, and there were some great river views!
After lunch and a further long bus journey, we walked for a fairly short time to Jagat and stayed in a small eco-hotel, and had our first taste of dhal bhat, which is the staple food of trekkers and is essentially lentils with rice, with some vegetables on the side. The accommodation in the tea houses was really basic. I shared rooms with another trekker from the UK, Luke. The rooms were small and it was really cold, but extra blankets were provided so it was warm enough when you got into the sleeping bag, but desperately cold when you emerged from it!
The next day we then trekked from Jagat to Bagarchhap, setting off at around 8am and reaching the destination at around 5pm, with the occasional short stops for rest and lunch. It was a tough hike, often uphill, and we covered a distance of 17 kilometres. The mountain views were spectacular, but this was a really challenging day for me physically, and I started to realise that I would have benefited from being stronger to take on board the demands of it all.
From Bagarchhap the next day we trekked to Chame, a distance of 21 kilometres, and this was when things started to go awry. It was just so physically tough and made worse by walking through heavy rain for the last couple of hours, and when we reached Chame I was feeling quite unwell and completely exhausted. Later on I wondered whether shorter treks over those 2 days would have helped me avoid falling ill, but perhaps not, although I think when you over-exert yourself, you do become a bit weaker and maybe that makes you more susceptible to illness. Without going into the gory details, I really was not well and I carried on the next day to partially walk to Pisang, which was around 16 kilometers. But when I reached Pisang I really didn't feel too great at all, and Ghelu, who was really kind and supportive throughout, concluded I had acute mountain sickness and that I needed to get down from the mountains as soon as possible.
Ghelu was constantly encouraging me, which was great, but my energy levels were so low and made worse by having completely lost my appetite, and the thought of consuming any food was too awful to contemplate. We were to have 2 days of rest in Manang to help our bodies adjust to the altitude, which Ghelu hoped would give my body time to recover and adjust, but the morning after reaching Manang (3,500 metres above sea level) things hadn't stabilised, and we decided it was best for me to come down from the mountains and so that was arranged. It felt very odd coming down, almost as if it was happening to somebody else rather than me.
Ironically the rest of the trek, albeit at higher altitudes, was nowhere near as long as those first two punishing days covering 38 kilometers.
So I ended up back in Kathmandu, was checked over in a hospital and after a few days of rest felt pretty much back to normal again, apart from feeling quite tired. Having mentally geared myself to the trek through those long days, it felt very odd to be back in Kathmandu although I was very grateful to Ghelu for arranging it all. I also felt I'd been pretty unlucky not to still be on the trek enjoying the mountain views! So I resolved to try and get up to the mountains once I'd properly recovered.
Reflecting upon it all later in Kathmandu, I felt it would have made much more sense to have arranged the trek from Nepal itself rather than the UK, which in hindsight had been quite a naive thing to do. Not only would it have been so much cheaper, but as I came to realise, treks can be organised to suit the trekker through so many trekking agencies, and being able to talk through with a good trekking agency about how far you felt able to trek each day would have been very beneficial. There were porters who conveyed our stuff from place to place, but it was equally feasible to hire a porter and guide independently through an agent.
No doubt there are definite social benefits in trekking in a larger group - and the group I was with were a really nice bunch of people - but the disadvantage is that you are kind of stuck on a treadmill with little or no flexibility in needing to cover so much distance every day in order to reach the next tea house as everything has been booked in advance and you are on a tight schedule, which creates considerable pressure. Whereas going independently, as I later discovered, you have more flexibility to take alternative routes and amend plans as you go along, without having to stick to a rigid agenda.
More generally I also wondered at the profits made by the UK-based agents, given that the guides / porters seem to receive little from the agents, and neither do the tea houses, which are extremely basic. One of the places we stayed in provided no electricity, and some had no flush toilets. Even though you're informed that the accommodation is very basic, and of course Nepal is a very low income country, I couldn't help thinking that with all that hard currency going to the trekking agent, you would hope some of it would go to helping to provide a better standard of accommodation, and supporting the people who make the trek happen, and actually when I did arrange an independent trek a few days later from Pokhara, the accommodation provided was much better than that which the group had received. There seems little incentive for the agents to give a better accommodation service, and as a trekker you have very little information about where you'll be staying or what the facilities will be like. Somebody somewhere must be making an awful lot of money, and it isn't those at the sharp end of delivering the trek!
My other bugbear was the poor porters who carried these huge bags on their heads. Each of us had a large heavy bag. It was hard for me to lift my own bag, but the porters carried 3 or 4 of these at a time with a band draped over their forehead to carry the weight. When I raised this with Ghelu, he said that they earned more by carrying more and that that was their choice, but what about the pretty pitiful wages that push them into doing that in the first place, which must increase their risk of sustaining injury? I'd much prefer to hire a porter independently to carry my stuff alone and pay them (and the guide) a decent rate. As a supposedly ethical and responsible trekking provider, I would have hoped gadventures would have enforced limits on how much the porters carried, but that did not seem to happen. The porters work so ridiculously hard, and coming on a trip like this should offer some means of enabling rich foreigners to alleviate some of their economic distress.
Oh dear, the above probably reads like a bit of a rant, and its not intended to. I suppose its only when you've had these kinds of experiences that you reflect on what's really going on and how things could be made better.
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| River view |
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| On the way to Chame |
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| At Manang |
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| Temple view near Pisang |
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| Mountain view near Chame |
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