Listen to some Nepali music while you look at the pictures.....
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...in the pipeline.....
Lothar's:
It was my third trip to Nepal. It was great going to two different parts of Nepal this time - they were different enough to make the effort and extra danger worthwhile...I think. When we flew in to Lukla we were already 500m above Australia's highest mountain - Mount Kosciuszko. For the next few days, all around us, were snow-capped mountain peaks which were 3-5km higher still. Awesome! The Annapurna Sanctuary a couple of weeks later was just as spectacular (if not more)!
In Kathmandu we did the usual touristy things - lots of shopping and eating, avoiding the touts and traffic, and visiting Durbar Square, Bodhnath Stupa, Patan, and Bhaktapur. Pokhara, as usual, was a lot more relaxing than Kathmandu - it has the lake, much less traffic (and touts!), and has mountain views (from the tops of hotels).
We had quite a few incidents this time- a rock slammed into my shoulder (nothing was broken), a plane crashed (at Lukla) and killed 18 people, a bacterial/giardia infection wouldn't go away and made Linda miss out on the Sanctuary, and Linda's 270 degree flip 100m from the end of the trek - she was able to hobble around on her bruised ankle and join in all the activities over the next few days but back in Australia discovered that the outside part of her ankle had actually broken. But you don't have to go on holidays to break a limb - as our president discovered in her garage!
Positives: almost everything else I suppose - scenery, culture, food, etc. You also learn to thoroughly appreciate the comforts and infrastructure we have back in Australia even though many Australians whinge about it. You learn to eat and enjoy more vegetarian food. In the cities and on the trek you have a wide choice of western or Nepalese style foods. All the months of training we did beforehand made the treks much more rewarding .... however we all worked hard and each sweated off a few kilos. You learn to use squat toilets but more and more toilets are western like. You learn to laugh at and put up with the lack of hygiene. We saw more wildlife than in previous treks (see below).
As noted last year, the popular treks are getting more crowded in certain sections and it won't be long before many more trekkers will have to take their tents to be assured of a bed for the night. Between Chhomrong and ABC some of the lodges had already been booked out for the evening by 7:30am in the morning! Guides or porters would be sent ahead early to place bookings. Trekkers without guides/porters were always at a disadvantage unless they could walk fast and also left their lodgings at 4am or earlier...
Guides: Lukla - Chattar Dhan Rai ( chattur3@hotmail.com ) , Pokhara - Minbhadur Hamal ( dipendra124@gmail.com ) We employed a guide and 2 porters on each section of the trek - each porter carrying less than 20kg of our luggage. We saw quite a few porters carrying loads of kero which looked in excess of 100kg!!
Hotels: Kathmandu - Acme
Guesthouse Pokhara -
Karki Guesthouse
2007 Nepal trip
2000 Nepal trip
Proposed 2009 Nepal trip (Langtang, Gosainkund, Helambu)
Fauna: apart from the many domestic animals (including water buffalo), large butterflies, insects, sacred cows roaming the streets, etc, we also saw longhaired "Yaks" (in many manifestations), Danfe/Danphe pheasants, Musk Deer, Choughs, black kites, Himalayan Thar/Tahr (a near true goat), Langur and Rhesus Macaque monkeys, Lammergeyers, and a guinea pig like creature near ABC which could have been a Pikka.
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