Hiking in the Himalaya's

After several chaotic days in Kathmandu I decided to head over to Pokhara, the second largest city in Nepal.  To get there I endured a very long 7-hour bus ride sitting next to a fellow American who felt the need to preach to me the entire time about how he found Jesus.  Needless to say, I was more than relieved when we arrived in Pokhara which turned out to be a small piece of paradise compared to Kathmandu.  Pokhara, situated on a beautiful lake, is a bit lower in altitude and much warmer than Kathmandu.  It was lovely to see palm trees with snow capped mountains in the background. 

                                                   

Nepal is a trekker’s paradise with treks through the Himalaya Mountains ranging anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks or longer.  Along the well-marked trails you typically encounter “teahouses” which are village-run guesthouses providing basic accommodation and food.  This was fantastic since there was no need to carry heavy backpacks filled with camping gear and food and you had the opportunity to interact with the local villagers.

Typical room on the trail ($2)

After talking to a few ex-guides around Pokhara I felt comfortable that there was no need to hire a guide or a porter to carry my things.  Being the independent person that I am, I decided to go it alone and was told that there would be lots of people on the trail so I would never really be alone.   My only concern was the weather.  The day before I left for my trek there was a torrential downpour in Pokhara that brought hail the size of quarters.  Imagine being stuck on the trail with no shelter while being pelted with hail of that size!

Porters would carry at least 3 backpacks each!

With a trail map in hand I caught the local bus to the trailhead and set out on a 6-day trek of the Poon Hill – Ghorepani – Ghandruk circuit through the beautiful and stunning Annapurna Range of the Himalaya Mountains. 

Annapurna Range of the Himalaya Mountains

For the next 6 days my days went like this: 

Wake up around 7am and eat a great breakfast at the guesthouse (sometimes with the most stunning view), pack up my gear and head out on the trail, hike for a few hours and hopefully find shelter from the daily rain (and sometimes hail), continue hiking and stop off at a little café for lunch, hike for a few more hours, find a guesthouse around 4pm and shower, enjoy a nice dinner, and then off to bed.

Typically I walked for 4-7 hours a day and most of it was either straight uphill or downhill, almost never was it flat.  The first 2 days were tough as it was a constant uphill battle but the views afterwards made it all worth it.  

View at Poon Hill

Along the way I met several trekkers headed in the same direction and we’d meet up at the end of the day and enjoy a great dinner together.  

Trekking friends along the way

The best part of my day was always arriving to the guesthouse in the late afternoon, taking off my sweaty and dirty clothes, showering in a hot shower, putting on warm - dry clothes and then eating a big dinner of Dal Bhat (the local Nepalese dish).  Such a fantastic experience!

Welcome to Nepal

Crossing the “Friendship Bridge” from Tibet into Nepal I could tell immediately that I was in a different country.  The people looked more Indian than Asian, the infrastructure was in disrepair, the food had more of an Indian influence, the streets were filthier, businesses closed down on Saturday (rather than Sunday), and even the time was a bit different.  When it’s 12pm in Michigan it’s 9:45pm in Nepal.   

Border town Kodari, Nepal

From the border the only affordable way to reach Kathmandu was to take a local bus.  I thought that a journey of 60 miles would be a piece of cake but instead it turned out to be the most grueling bus ride of my trip so far.  Besides being very uncomfortable (knees squished against the seat in front of me), people were crammed in the aisle, loud music was blaring from the speakers, both people and goats were riding on top of the bus, and it seemed that every 30 minutes we were stopped by Nepali soldiers who would board the bus, searching our bags.  The bus took 6 hours to travel 60 miles…  that’s 10 miles an hour!

After the long, excruciating ride on the bus we arrived to the bus station in Kathmandu.  A few fellow foreigners and I decided to share a taxi to save on cost.  It was quite hilarious to see all 4 of us (with our large backpacks) along with the driver try and fit into a car the size of a subcompact.  On the way to Paknajol, where the quieter hotels were located, we drove through Thamel, the main tourist area of Kathmandu.   The very narrow streets were crowded with people, taxis, motorcycles, rickshaws, and were lined with shop after shop selling trekking gear, restaurants which surprisingly served up excellent “western” food, internet cafes, and money changers (in Nepal you can easily change US Dollar to Nepalese Rupee but trying to change Rupee back into Dollar was impossible).

Nepali ladies in Kathmandu

I arrived to my candlelit hotel and soon realized that Kathmandu has some serious power outages.  The electricity is off most of the day and night on purpose, with “2 to 4 hours” of power twice a day (typically a few hours during the day and a few at night or early morning).  To make it more complicated, each day the power comes on at different time but to make it a little easier they publish a “schedule of power” so at least I was able to plan ahead to charge my computer, camera batteries, and to even take a hot shower.

Kathmandu for me was an exhausting place (and just walking around I could feel my blood pressure skyrocket to unhealthy levels).  Besides being a very dirty city with water that borders on being lethal, it was overcrowded with people, honking cars, motorcycles, and even cows.   It took some getting used to seeing cows wandering the streets with people and cars but after awhile it seemed so normal.  Being a country of primarily Hindus the cow is sacred and killing one carries the same penalty as killing a person.

Durbar Square in Kathmandu

The day I was to fly out of Kathmandu the entire city went on strike.  Nothing was open and there was no transportation.  Luckily the strike did not affect the international flights but getting to the airport was another story.  Also it was at this time that my ATM card stopped working.  After spending a very expensive 20 minutes talking to a representative I found out that in Nepal, someone had stolen my card number and now had access to my account.  Oh the joys of traveling…  

7 Days in Tibet – On the Road to Mt. Everest

After spending 2 full days in Lhasa and getting my fill of monasteries we set off for something a little different… Mt. Everest.  For the next 2 days we drove for 7 hours a day in order to reach base camp.  At the time I didn’t think 7 hours sounded that bad but the roads in Tibet are not so good and soon 7 hours seemed like an eternity.  Since the majority of Tibet is so high and dry the landscape was completely brown and the only thing that the surrounding villages grow is barley and wheat.  Along the way we passed by a village where the driver had come from.  He told us that it was very common in this village for the brothers of a family to share one wife!

 Tibetan landscape

We arrived to Everest Base Camp (EBC) in the early evening and our guide gave us the option of sleeping in the guesthouse at the monastery or in a tent near Everest base camp.  We chose the tent! 

Tibetan tent at Everest Base Camp

Since Mt. Everest was covered in clouds we rested a bit and then set out on the 2 ½ mile hike to reach base camp.  It was really just a simple walk along a dirt road but it felt like an uphill climb the way my heart was racing and how out of breath I was.  I guess that is what happens at 17,000 feet!

Everest Base Camp at 17,000 feet

Sadly when we arrived to base camp Mt. Everest was still covered in clouds but it looked like they were dissipating.  We decided to stick around for a few minutes but the chilly wind was blowing so hard that it took our breath away so we decided to give up and headed back to camp.   On the way back my hands were so cold that I couldn’t even use them.  I’m not use to this kind of weather.  Luckily when we arrived to the tent there was a fire going in the stove (using yak dung as the fuel source) and we sipped on hot tea to warm up.  The sun was getting ready set so we stepped outside just in time to see the most spectacular view of Mt. Everest lit up by the sun.  It was absolutely stunning!

Mt. Everest at sunset

The night in the tent was not one of my more enjoyable nights.  To begin with the Tibetans in the tent decided to play a loud card slapping and shouting card game into the wee hours of the night while chain smoking.  Imagine being stuck in a tent with 5 chain smoking guys!  Overnight the fire in the stove went out and the temperature dipped down to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.  In the morning the water in my water bottle was completely frozen (as was I)!

After eating a traditional Tibetan breakfast of tsampa (roasted barley flour mixed with water) and drinking salty yak butter tea, we set out on our final 7 hour drive to the Nepalese border.  We ended up making our own path “a shortcut the driver tells us” along a dried up riverbed, stopping occasionally to remove large rocks out of our way.  The drive was spectacular though, taking us through the Himalayan Mountains where it was snowing.

7 Days in Tibet - Lhasa

I arrived to Lhasa and was greeted by my Tibetan guide Gyalsten, and my fellow tour companion, Canadian Bill.  In the Tibetan language, Lhasa means the Holy Land or the Buddha Land and is the center of Tibet's politics, economy and culture. Our guide told us that it’s common for people to say that 87% of Lhasa is Tibetan but in reality it is only 60%.  The remainder 40% is Chinese who come to Lhasa to work.  Immediately you can see that Tibetans and Chinese are not similar in any shape or form.  In fact one tourist I met proclaimed, “Tibetans look more Mexican than anything else”.  And it’s true…

The city of Lhasa

Everywhere I went in Lhasa I’d see the presence of the Chinese army.  Soldiers and police were stationed on top of buildings, in front of monasteries, you name it...they were there just waiting for trouble to break out.  But to me Lhasa appeared to be such a peaceful place and the Tibetan people so harmless.

Arriving to Lhasa the first thing I noticed is how important Tibetan Buddhism is to the everyday lives of the Tibetan people.  Walking down the street (always clockwise around the temple) there would be hundreds of Tibetans making their daily pilgrimage around the temple, chanting, twirling prayer wheels, or fingering prayer beads.  I even encountered several people throwing themselves down on the ground in what the guide told me was prostration.  This was something I had never seen before.  In Buddhism, Buddhists carry out prostration before the image of the Buddha to show their respect for them. This was to become a common sight in Tibet… almost as common as prayer flags.  Tibetan Buddhists put prayer flags outside their homes and places of spiritual worship for the wind to carry the good vibrations across the countryside. They are said to bring happiness, long life, and prosperity to the person who put the flag there and also those in the vicinity.

Pilgrim performing prostration

We spent much of our time in Lhasa visiting the monasteries of which the most famous is Potala Palace.  This enormous monastery was the chief residence of the Dalai Lama until the current Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959.  The monastery is thirteen stories tall and contains over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and 200,000 statues in addition to many tombs of previous Dalai Lamas.

Potala Palace

The other monasteries we had the opportunity to visit were Norbulingka (Summer Palace) which was where the Dalai Lama would spend his summers. In fact it was here that the current Dalai Lama made his escape to India disguised as a Tibetan soldier in 1959.  At Sera Monastery, the 2^nd largest monastery in Tibet, we had the fortune to watch monks debate the philosophies learned that day.  This was quite an intense experience with lots of shouts and claps as they try to get their point across.  And at Jokhang Temple, in the center of Old Lhasa, we witnessed hundreds of Tibetans making their daily pilgrimage to this very important temple.

                                                 

Monks debating

7 Days in Tibet – The 44 hour Train Ride

The train from Chengdu to Lhasa was to take 44 hours and instead of riding in the loud and very cramped quarters of the hard sleeper I decided to treat myself and pay a little extra money for the roomier and quieter soft sleeper.  At the train station in Chengdu there was even a separate waiting area for those with soft sleeper tickets, much like a VIP area.  This was a very welcome sight since most train waiting areas have been cramped and covered with litter all over the floors.

Chinese train ticket to Tibet

After boarding the train I was required to fill out a health declaration form stating that I was in good health and able to travel at high elevations.  The Qinghai-Tibet Railway is the world's highest railway with an average elevation of 13,000 feet.

The soft sleeper compartment was nice… the mattresses were bigger and more comfortable and I could actually sit up in my upper bunk.  There was a door to shut out the noise from the hallway and each bunk even had a TV but they didn’t work.  I was living it up… unfortunately I witnessed plenty of Chinese and Tibetan passengers that weren’t as fortunate.  They were stuck riding in a hard seat for the entire 44 hour journey.  I can think of nothing worse!

The comfortable "soft sleeper"

After 20 hours on the train we crossed from mainland China into Tibet.  The change was apparent.  No longer were there little villages and big cities scattered about.  We were now greeted by brown, barren, and empty land with the occasional wandering nomad with his herd of sheep or yak. 

Tibetan landscape

After 36 hours the landscape begins to change and we pass snow covered mountain ranges, turquoise lakes, and frozen rivers.  For as populated as China is, Tibet is not.  This entire time we have passed only a handful of tiny villages consisting of at most 5-10 houses. 

Tibetan landscape

Overnight I awoke several times to find myself uncomfortably gasping for air.  I could only assume that we were going over the pass that was at an elevation of 16,500 feet.   Luckily for those passengers that were having real difficulty breathing the train did supply oxygen masks (much like in an airplane) in each compartment.