Beauty and Blisters - 32 days in the Himalayas - Part One

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Where to begin? Kathmandu, I suppose, is as good a place as any.

Ridiculously crowded (I reckon in my first hour I saw far more tourists than in 3 months of Pakistan), and "travelling light"- i.e. everyone speaks English, the food ranges from Indian to Mexican to French (very little Nepali on offer unless you go actively hunting), and the hotels hardly ever have good-old squat toilets in them (actually, I must admit to still hating squat toilets after all these months, but when in Rome....)

I said in my last blog that I wanted some easy travelling after the rigours of Pakistan. This certainly fits the bill, although it feels more like being a tourist than a traveller. So, four days after arriving I left.

Not leave Nepal of course, but its capital.

This being Nepal, trekking had to be the thing to do, and Everest seemed to me to be the region in which first to do it.

Now trekking in the Everest region has turned into a very organised, expensive, crowded business. At least it is the way most people do it.

You have two options really:

1) Fly from Kathmandu to Lukla (35 minutes, $100 or so one way) and then trek for a maximum of 7 days to Everest Base Camp and then back the same way.

2) Get a bus from Kathmandu to Jiri (anything from 7 to 14 hours, $5 or so one way) and then trek for 6ish days through lightly inhabited, lush "real Nepal" lowland valleys to Lukla - then follow everyone else up towards Base Camp (although much quicker than the Goretex brigade because you're already very fit and well acclimatised).

99.9% of people choose Option 1. About 95% of them take a guide and/or a porter.

I decided on Option 2. No guide, no porter, only a pretty useless 1:100,000 map and a keen sense of adventure.


The blogs that follow are an attempt to describe some of this, but more importantly to store as a depository for some of my pictures (pictures for the initial Jiri to Lukla area leg are included in this blog).

Now I know that most of my loyal, devoted, beloved subscribees don't like mountains, and that you are probably fed up with them after the Pakistan blogs. But, well, how best to say this. Tough. There's a loyal few mountainophiles out there - these blogs are dedicated to you.

On that note, sadly, these blogs also have to be dedicated to the 18 people who died when their plane crashed on landing at Lukla airport a couple of weeks ago. I must admit to thinking about changing some of the text above in light of this, but then the blog wouldn't be authentic.

And there's no point writing something just to be politically correct. At least not when you're travelling.

PDx

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