The Langtan Trek - apart from the hairy 9 hour bus ride to and from the trek and the toll that walking up and down hills has on your knees this would have to be the highlight of our visit to Nepal. As you can see from the photos the scenery was just beautiful!
We caught the bus (you know those ones that we talked of previously that pick up people and goods and more people and more goods and play the same Tibetan songs distortedly) from Kathmandu on Monday the 5th July. We were 'blessed' by rainy misty weather for most of the day so we rarely saw much beyond the edge of the road, how far up we were, or what was (or was not) below us. We only had bitumen for the first half of the trip and had to traverse several landslides (remember the road was not much wider than the bus) near the end of the trip.
We arrived in Dunche to heavy mist and our hotel (The Tibet Mountain View) had a great view of white nothing out our window. We know that this is the off season but we were hopeful that we could see a bit more than clouds.
The next morning the mist had lifted and we could see that our town was perched high up above a valley. The town and it's fields went down to the edge of a drop off to the river 500m below.
We followed the road over hills and dales for a couple of hours then the track left the road at Thulo Barku. Along the way we came across several gangs of villagers who are beginning the construction of a road to their town, Thulo Shyabru. One gang were having an 'easy day', and when we met them they were just having lunch of Dal baht, had plenty left over and offered us some. We accepted. We had our own bowls and eating utensils and the food was good! (They had just run out of the pork. Ohh.;) ) after lunch a few of them went off singing and playing the pots as drums.
We spent the night in a village that resembles Tibetan culture more than Nepali, where the women weave brightly striped fabrics and knit the best gloves, beanies, and socks.
The following day was down hundreds of steps, across a river, up a hill, down a hill, through a bamboo forest, along the fantastic, boulder-full, raging river, across the river and up, up ,up through rainforest to the Ganesh View lodge at Rimche that has the best solar-heated shower and a cosy dining room off the family's kitchen cum bedroom (see kitchen photo). It was very humid during the day so our clothes were saturated and the shower was very welcome.
Day three of the trek we were told would be much easier, but it was still down then mostly a long gradual uphill. The scenery changed from rainforest to meadow and pine forest then off in the distance we could see Langtan village high up in a suspended valley. Then it disappeared as the clouds came in and we trekked for another two hours in the mist.
But as you can see (from the photos) again the clouds lifted the next day and the views of snow covered peaks, sheer huge rock faces and waterfalls, were fantastic! This day was only a few hours further up the valley to Jenny's favourite place of all - Kyangin Gompa. People have no real backyards, the lodges (much of the village is lodges -most of these closed at this time of the year) sit on a green grassy field that the yaks come in to graze on in the evening. And looking around you can see glaciers up one way, the wide, white-pebbly river another way and a raging river torrent between a pine tree-covered slope and a walking track descending down the valley another.
We spent a day and a half exploring:- a yak cheese factory, up to the glaciers, and further up the river to some more glaciers through horse, cattle, yak and sheep grazing country along the river. Every now and then we would come across temporary summer settlements - rock structures with roofs made of bamboo curved poles and blue tarpaulins where the yak herders stayed and collected milk to make yak cheese, collect the hair that is peeling off the yaks and let the little ones grow strong before the winter sets in.
Each afternoon the mist would again descend and we would find ourselves returning with limited sight ahead.
Our return journey back down the valley only took us two days, but each day we found ourselves traipsing through the rain by mid afternoon. What with being wet on the outside and wet from perspiration on the inside of our clothes it was almost pointless using raingear - but the hot showers and dry clothes were a welcome end to the day.
We ended our trek at a slightly different town, Shyabru Besi, which did not require too much uphill.
Whilst we were here we met a lady who is training to be a teacher. She has done five months training so far. She teaches during the week and every Saturday she attends a training course at a town that is four hours walk from her village. She can walk downhill for an hour and catch the bus up the hill for another hour instead of walking but she gets bus sick, so she gets up at four am on Saturdays to be at the course by 10am then walks home again in the afternoon after the course. She also has a three year old son that she often carries on her back down the hill to the village an hour away for her aunt and uncle to mind. We've got it easy, haven't we!
The day was fairly clear for the bus back to Kathmandu. This time we could see what was below (or not below) us. There were some bad landslides after Dunche - Jenny had her eyes shut nearly all the time and even Phil got worried. We had about 400kg of potatoes loaded in the aisle of the bus. I suppose this helped keep the wheels on the ground!
