Hi Everyone,
I'm Back in Kathmandu, Nepal, after wandering up & down a few small hills to have a bit of a look at Mount Everest.
Before that I did a week long trek to the Annapurna ranges (kinda at the other end of Nepal). It started at a fairly low altitude outside of Phokara and climbed pretty steeply to a reasonable height. It was sunny & very hot so the sweat was running nearly as much as the numerous rivers & streams. Lots of rice paddies, stunning views of snow covered mountains (suprise suprise), classy toilets (sarcasm) & pretty good food & accommodation (sometimes even with hot showers of a sort). The sherpa guides take pretty good care of you & I've got used to black tea (with or without lemon cordial). Lots of donkey/mule caravans on the trail and of course lots of porters with truly amazing loads. They are a bit tougher & fitter than me... I found coming down the steep hills much harder than going up as it's harder on the knees & calves.
Then it was off to the Royal Chitwan nation park for a 3 day jungle safari.
It was incredibly humid & very hot. I thought I was sweating going uphill on the trek, but nothing like this. I thought nothing could beat the humidity of Bangkok, but again I’m proven wrong. Up to 6 showers a day and dripping with sweat again 2 minutes later. Very yuk. Did two Elephant back safari's through the jungle & grasslands - one in the afternoon and another early one morning (much cooler). We saw lots of rhino, deer & wild birds. Didn't see of hear any tigers though.
The Elephants are amazing - so large but so gentle, graceful & silent (except when tearing down trees/grasses to eat). Not the most comfortable ride in the world (still better than an ox-cart!), but you get used to it.
We got back to Kathmandu & some clean(er) clothes and were still walking around like old men from our stiff legs. The new group we met up with to do the Everest trek with looked so clean & fresh...
We flew from Kathmandu towards the Himalayas in a tiny 10 seater plane(with some tantalising glimpses of them through the clouds & mountain valleys)into Lukla airstrip (which is the shortest & steepest airfield I've ever seen - about 350 - 400 metres long with a steep hillside at one end and dropping away into a huge valley at the other) & began trekking along the main trail that winds its way to Everest base camp.
It was lines of very hairy Yaks carrying loads, rather than donkeys on this trail - the Yaks are much bigger and have very sharp horns, so it really pays to stay out of their way (usually by pressing yourself into the hillside/cliffside/stonewallside and waiting till they pass - there isn't a lot of room on these trails). They do have a nice selection of bells (like cowbells - yakbells?) around there neck, so you can hear them coming from a long way away.
Three days of up & down hills (more up than down)later, everyone except myself and one other person (who did the same trek around the Annapurnas as me) got some form of altitude sickness. Big headaches, vomiting, lack of sleep etc - nothing too serious. We stopped for an extra day to acclimatise, during which it rained heavily non-stop. (Thankfully that was the only rain we got all trek, and it was brilliantly clear for all the good bits!) While there, we found out a person in the lodge we were about to go to, had died during the night of altitude sickness during their sleep. This made a few of the group a bit paranoid & worried, and 2 people from another group even decided to not go any further. The story was clarified a day later that the girl who died was sick from day one, but refused (against all advice) to go to a lower altitude (the only cure), and therefore got worse & worse. Stupidity really.
So we continued up to Thanboche (about 14,200 ft) and spent a bitterly cold night there (sleeping bag was still very warm though!). Got up and watched the sun rise over Mt Everest & surrounding mountains, which was breathtaking - completely cloudless. Took far too many photos... Went to some monasteries & climbed past 14,500 ft - nearly twice as high as Mt Kosciusko, still not quite half as high as Mt Everest (8848m), but as high as I've skydived from out of an aeroplane.
We spent 4 or 5 days coming back down and flew back to Kathmandu yesterday. My legs survived this trek better than the Annapurna trek - partly as the Annapurna trek starts much lower and climbs steeper more quickly up a greater vertical distance (we also did it at about 3 times the pace of the Everest trek). The Everest one starts at a much higher altitude & therefore you have to travel much more slowly to acclimatise properly.
Early on my last morning in Nepal I went Hot air ballooning over Kathmandu. It was very interesting with kids coming from everywhere to watch this alien balloon take off and land in their rice paddies. The view itself wasn't that spectacular as there was a thick haze over Kathmandu and only got some misty views of the Himalayas in the distance, even though we went up over 7000ft. We floated right next to and above the airport for quite a while, and thought some plane must soon come in to land and crash into us, but the wind slowly changed and we drifted away again. A nice soft landing and another 50 million kids crowding around asking what my name was and if I was a film star. Didn't they instantly recognise me as Arnold Swartzenegger???
So now it’s off to London via Bangkok (one week only - I'm off to France on the 19th), so I’ll catch up with some of you Londonites then.
From there it’s overland to the middle East, via France, Italy, Greece & Turkey.
The route & countries then on may be re-arranged depending on the current political situation, but we shall see!
That's all for now,
Take care all,
Ian
