My first taste of trekking the himalaya
Upon arrival in Kathmandu, I jumped into a taxi at the airport. That was my first realisation that Nepal was going to be a culture shock.
The cab had incense sticks burning and carpets on the seats. Nepal likes carpets and rugs.
I switched my phone on to receive a message from a friend I know from Thailand.
“Hey Marc, I know some people in Kathmandu, you should totally meet up with them at the comedy club”
You are never alone when you solo travel.
The next evening I headed out to the comedy club in Thamel, the tourist district where all the hotels, trekking shops and restaurants are. And street peddlers, so many street peddlers.
Kathmandu streets are crazy. After living on a small, quiet Thailand island for the last 3 months, I was not ready for a city. Especially one that made Bangkok feel like a quiet village.
I was not enjoying it. It took me a few weeks to find the beauty in Kathmandu, now I absolutely love the place, but the initial shock was more than I could handle at first.
I met up with the fellow nomads at the club and we hit it off, they invited me to go hiking with them the following week, and that hike is what this story is about.
I just recovered from being sick when I met up with the others. We met on a street corner with our packs. Two local lads, a Romanian girl and my two new friends from the club.
Our ride into the Himalaya arrived, a large 4x4 jeep. We all jumped in and set off on our first mission, to navigate Kathmandu potholes and people filled roads. The roads in the city are still recovering from the huge earthquake that wrecked Kathmandu valley 5 years previous. A 4x4 jeep is needed in the city as much as it’s needed in the mountains. We were getting thrown around inside like crazy. This was the easy part of the 8-hour drive into the Himalaya.
The plan was, we drive to a teahouse at the bottom of the highest peak in the Kathmandu valley, spend the night there and start our hike up to the summit the next morning at sunrise. Then back down to our jeep and drive back to the city. A 2-day adventure that normally takes 4 days if you go with a trekking company.
Getting to the teahouse was an adventure in itself.
A few hours drive from the city we were on mountain roads, the kind of roads that one mistake from our driver and we will be experiencing free fall. The road was narrow, enough room for one car. Nepal’s mountain roads are also home to massive 4x4 trucks with musical horns that don’t seem to have brakes. They drive quickly and will overtake anything in their path.
The roads magically grow to allow the trucks to pass, I have no idea how this works. Somehow trucks manage to pass us on blind corners when the road is at its most narrowist. We had to stop and help one truck dig its way out of the road that it managed to get stuck in. We had no choice as the vehicle was blocking the road. Helping others like this is all part of the Nepalese culture, everyone helps out.
We have a similar culture in the UK, only in the UK we shout out the window “Sucks to be you, should have joined the AA” as we drive past flipping the bird.
High up on the mountain roads our driver stopped the jeep. There has been an accident further up the mountain with a logging company, the logs rolled down and found their new home blocking our only path.
This is where the massive respect for our driver started. We all got out and he directed us to make a ramp so he could get the jeep over the logs. We watched from the road as our driver took on the challenge of part jumping, part skidding over the wet logs. The back wheels went sideways towards the road edge as he skillfully drove over the obstacles.
I looked over the side of the road, yep, couldn’t see the ground. It was miles below us.
The rain started. Not your normal kind of rain, but sideways monsoon rain, the kind that would wash you off a mountain with ease.
A few miles later the mountain decided it couldn’t hold the amount of rain that was hitting it and decided to dump all the water down the side in a waterfall. A waterfall that use to be our road. We drove through rapids that were pushing the jeep towards the edge of the road, towards the sheer drop that didn’t seem to have a bottom. Often on Nepalese mountain roads, you just accept your fate. The only thing you can do is smile about how dangerous things suddenly become, and try to ignore what is happening the other side of the window.
A typical bus ride is the same, only faster.
After we made it past the rapids night time fell. Now we have a sideways monsoon storm in pitch darkness on roads wide enough for one small car. We had the windows open as we were steaming up.
As the bushes on the side of the road brushed the jeep, we took on some unexpected passengers.
Leeches.
We spend the next few hours pulling leeches off each other and throwing them out the window. They like to sucker onto the windows on the outside when they can’t get inside to snack on us. This was a first for me, even after all the jungle hikes I have done, I have never had to deal with leeches before. Like a true English gentleman, I let the girls in the jeep pull the leeches off of me. I wasn't quite ready to touch one yet.
The jeep stopped abruptly once more.
This time a bolder was blocking the road, it must have fallen down the mountain and came to rest taking up most of the road. I could see no way past it. Lucky for us our driver knew what to do, with 3 wheels on the road and the other floating in the air off the side of the mountain, he skillfully navigated around it by engaging the anti-gravity drive I assume.
The driver was now my new hero.
Our clear road didn’t last long, a few minutes later and the jeep stopped for the last time. When the driver declared “That’s it, that’s as close as I can get, now we walk” I knew things must be bad outside the steamed-up windows of the jeep. We got out to see what obstacle could possibly be so bad that made our hero driver throw in the towel.
Yup, the road was gone.
It had crumbled down the mountain and all that remains was a 30cm ledge and a drop into the darkness. With around 5 miles to go to the teahouse, our hike starts now.
We got our wet weather gear on, I had a jacket and a poncho, our driver had a t-shirt. I gave our driver my jacket, I have been carrying it around the world and never used it. Now seemed a good time to lighten my luggage. We started walking.
Now I have a rather irrational fear of high places. It’s not the hight that scares me, its the last inch of a fall to the ground that scares me. The 30cm ledge that we had to pass was made easy as we couldn’t see the ground below us, the monsoon rain also helped with that.
We abandoned the jeep and made it on foot to the teahouse in time for dinner. After we had removed all the leeches from our legs. I was trying to work out how we could get back to Kathmandu the following evening. The road home seemed impassable with everything we had to overcome to get here.
Nepal teahouses are fantastic places, we sat around the fire chatting to the hosts, eating an endless supply of dal bhat, a local curry that is famously served at teahouses that gives you the energy needed to trek. When the plate is half empty, the host’s children quickly run to fill your plate again. They feed you well at teahouses.
We all slept in the same room, the rats also slept in our room, but they didn’t sleep a lot, mostly running around under the floor and in the walls.
Just after the lights went out we heard “Ewwwww that’s gross” Turns out we are also sharing our room with leeches that like to hang out on our water bottles.
Sunrise, it was time to do what we came for. Walk uphill for 9 hours.
Nothing could have prepared me for what was to come, no amount of hiking on flat ground would have prepared me for mountain trekking. Steps were carved into the path for most of the hike. Maybe if I spend 9 hours a day on a step machine in the gym I might have been prepared because that’s exactly what it was, 9 hours of climbing steps. 6 hours up, and 3 hours down.
We were also at high altitude. Another first for me. The summit is at 3771 metres or 12372 feet.
It’s not really recommended to ascend that kind of height quickly, but since we were going up and down in one day, altitude sickness should be tolerable but it can affect anyone at anytime. Unfortunately, we lost one team member early in the trek. He succumbs to altitude sickness within an hour of leaving our base camp teahouse. He had to turn back and wait for us in the village.
It was around this point I started to regret smoking for 30 years. Each step hurt, I was panting while standing still and its only just started.
We pushed on, only stopping briefly for a quick drink and to remove any leeches that found their way into our boots. Its just one foot in front of the other.
“It’s not an adventure unless you are suffering”
And suffering I was. I never expected to make it to the summit. This little walk turned into my Everest.
There are a few rest points on the way that serve hot Yaks milk to the strong Nepalese that carry goods while trekking the mountains. We passed a lot of groups of old ladies carrying bricks and planks of wood on their backs and heads. They didn’t seem out of breath like us. They plod on slowly, one foot in front of the other, making their way to the destination of their large bundles.
Gasping for air, near the top I was taking one step for every 3 breaths. I felt the oxygen levels drop the closer we got to the top. I was doing calculations in my head, I am currently the equivalent of a third of the way up Everest. A mountain that takes months to climb. Why would anyone do that to themselves? (yeah I know the answer: because it’s there) The final push was sheer pain. I could see the summit through the clouds and rain, it seemed close, never seemed to get any closer.
I was the last to make it to the summit, after a few high fives my legs gave out and I laid on the ground panting. That’s when 3 old Nepalese ladies arrived, gave their baskets of bricks to the guy building a temple at the top, turned around and started walking back down. I would have said Namaste if I had the breath. Instead, I just marvelled at their strength, this mountain was my biggest physical achievement, once was enough, but these ladies do this daily for a few rupees.
Unfortunately, as was monsoon season, visibility on the summit was low as we were in clouds. Its a shame as on a clear day you get a 360-degree panoramic view of the Himalaya from up there, even Everest some 140 miles away can be seen clearly.
I had only one question: How do we get back down? My legs won’t work any more! Now I understand trekking poles. I mentally added it to a list of things to buy ASAP.
A few minutes after leaving the summit the muscles in my legs started to spasm. They have never been made to walk up steps for 6 hours before. Steps that were 20-50cm high. Going back down can be dangerous as it is easy to twist an ankle on the loose rocks. At this point, I gave up removing leeches from my legs. It’s just easier to let them feed and drop off on their own, they close the wound and even give a little anaesthesia. Plus I stopped caring.
Three hours later we could see the village. I say we, most of the team were already drinking hot Yak milk at the teahouse. One of the Nepalese lads stayed with me, he was hurting as much as me and I welcomed the company, we motivated each other as we entered the village. The only problem was we were lost.
We could see the village, hear it even but there was no sign of a path. We used our hands to lift our legs over a fence and collapsed the other side into someone’s garden. Stumbling around the border of that village trying to find our teahouse seem to take ages. It was dark and raining by the time we collapsed around the fire at the teahouse, my legs were done, the last few steps finished them off.
A quick Yaks milk later and it was time to hike the 5 miles back to the jeep and do yesterdays jeep adventure all over again. I walked like I was drunk for every inch of the 5 miles.
We had less room driving the 8 hours back to Kathmandu as we picked up 2 locals from the village that needed the hospital in the city. I arrived back to my hotel around 1 am, hit the shower then passed out face first on the bed.
The next morning my shower floor looked like the floor of the jungle, complete with leeches, bugs, mud and leaves. It took me a good 10 minutes to walk down the two floors to get breakfast at the hotel. The staff had seen me try and walk and asked if I needed a doctor again.
I think it was around 7 days until I could walk properly again, by that time I was in Pohkara looking for my next adventure. One thing for sure, I was not going to be doing the 22 day Annapurna circuit trek this year. Despite how hard I found the hike, it remains one of my favourite adventures to date.
