Hello all,
After catching a flight to Luang Prabang we spent the first day finding an agent to trek with the following day and in the evening we headed out to the night market to scoff our faces before our trek.
We set off on a bumpy and dusty road in the back of a van with two other men (Tony from Switzerland and Migon from Argintina). We also had two local guides, Nick and Tim. Two hours later we arrived at the start of our adventure! We were told to carry as much water as we could as it had to last us two days as the village we were staying in didn't have any drinking water. We squeezed as much as we could (10 litres between us) into our small rucksacks and headed off across a bridge and up a steep hill. The trek was up hill for the first two and half hours with no shade in the mid day sun!
We had drank quite a lot of our water at this point and decided that we had best start rationing if it was going to last the two days. We
made our first stop at a Hmong village, consiting of 100 or so people. We visited the school within the village which had lots of children and only one teacher. We bought writing books and pencils at the market the previous day to give to any children we saw whilst trekking, so we donated the majority to the school. We stayed for a while helping the children and listening to them sing songs. Although our time their was short, It was one of the things we enjoyed the most. After that it was back to the trekking and 6 and half hours in total in the blazing sun we arrived at our Kamoot village,, hurray, very thirsty and absolutley knackered!The following morning we were up at 5am to the sounds of the animals and the men of the village getting ready to hunt or farm in the fields. After an early breakfast we had started the trek by 8am. We walked mainly through jungle
for 4 hours, which was a treat as we were in the shade for most of it. Along the way we saw a lady fishing for river weed with a stick, we were luckily enough to try some in Vang Vieng (our next stop after leaving Luang Prabang), supprisingly tasty.We'd pretty much ran out of water after another 2 hours of walking but luckily enough we had reached the end of our trek. We had stopped for lunch at the river, where we had a cool off and caught a boat to our pick up point. An hour or so waiting for the bus we were back on the dusty road to our hostel.
We got back at 3pm and I started to feel a bit unwell. Half an hour later I was being sick which continued until 11pm! I've never experienced such a dry mouth in all my life but the more I drank the more I was sick!! Julian was giving me reyhdration drinks but I couldn't keep them down so we went off to the hospital in a Tuk Tuk. I ended up on a drip suffering from heat stroke and so
we spent the night in hospital!!Nethertheless we had a great time trekking and would recommend it however, I won't be doing another!! ;0)
xxx
Brenda Britnell
non-member comment
Same in every country. Very sweet photo.