My travel diaries
Thursday 7 June, 2007 - Tharepati, Helambu, Nepal
I awake at 5.20 to the sound of Siling banging on the door of my room. We had agreed to get up at 5.30 to climb a little hill behind the lodge if the weather looked fine. It didn't look good last night, but when I look out of my window I see patches of blue sky. Within minutes I'm dressed and the two of us are ascending the hill behind the Namaste Lodge. We race up there quickly because we can clearly see the sky beginning to cloud over. The hill is about 200m above the lodge, and bedecked by prayer flags. I have a pleasant surprise when I reach the top, with views of Ganesh Himal and distant Manaslu the other side. I snap away furiously with my camera because I'm sure there won't be much opportunity for photography later in the day. By the time we get down, at 6.15, it has already clouded over.
Then a miracle happens. I pack my bag and have breakfast, and by the time we're ready to leave at 7, the sky has cleared and we have great views of Gosainkund. All is quiet by the lakeside, and apart from the lady meditator we are the only visitors at Gosainkund, but it isn't always so. Siling tells me that on the full moon in August it's home to a Hindu festival called Janai Purnima, when an incredible 30,000 pilgrims turn up. It's hard to imagine this idyllic setting of a clear lake perched high in the mountains crawling with 30,000 people. And I try not to imagine that, unlike Glastonbury, there will be no portaloos available, though the catering will probably be much better.
The ascent to the Laurebinayak La, at 4600m, is very gentle. The clear lakes, grass and rocky outcrops, as well as the rocky peaks nearby, remind me a lot of Scotland. But when we look behind us we see the distant backdrop of Ganesh and Manaslu on the far horizon - two giant snow peaks you certainly wouldn't see in Scotland. We pass three more smaller lakes and reach the pass at 8.30. It's been glorious weather - a pleasant surprise - and I've taken a great many photos while expecting it to cloud over at any moment.
We spend 15 minutes at the pass eating peanuts and yak cheese. Over the other side it has already started clouding over, but still we don't get the rain I've been expecting. We descend quickly. Dwarf juniper and rhododendron starts appearing at 3900m, and at 10 o'clock we reach a lone tea house in a place called Phedi. There is a camp site and accommodation here, and it probably commands a fine view over forested hillsides. Siling surveys the accommodation for The Responsible Travellers, but comes out of the lodge laughing.
"Come and have a look at the rooms here, Mark!" he says. I pass through the kitchen into an accommodation area. The "rooms" are a pair of partitioned sections no more than 6 foot by 5, and raised a couple of feet off the floor, presumably to keep the mice away. There are no mattresses; just wooden boards to sleep on. Earlier in the trek I'd been complaining about beds no more than 6 feet long that I had to curl up on. This would definitely be a place to take the camping option. We learn that the American/Zimbabwean couple stayed here last night, arriving at 6pm after their soggy crossing of the pass.
After a quick Sprite, we're off again. According to my map the next stretch to Gopte contours gently downhill from 3700m to 3500m. I'm expecting it to be easy going, but it doesn't quite work out that way. It's a magnificent path, but it's hard work over steep up-down up-down terrain, often over horrible bouldery stuff so that I have to watch carefully where I'm putting my feet. In the course of dropping 200m, we must have climbed several hundred more on a very steep path. Although it's misty we're aware of a steep drop to our right. The path is clinging to the slope and passing a very long way above a sharply descending river valley. All the way it winds through juniper and rhododendron forest. Often there are streams descending from our left which we have to cross over patches of snow, very carefully, as a slip could mean a long descent.
It takes us about two and a half hours to reach the lodge in Gopte, where the man living there cooks me some very greasy eggs and fried potato which don't go down well at all. Although we reach Gopte at 12.30, it looks like the monsoon heavens are about to open, and I'm worried we may end up having to spend the night here. I open my map to see what lies in store. The next place, Tharepati, looks to be even further along the trail than the stretch to Gopte, but Maila assures me it will only take an hour and a half. He turns out to be right. There are some steep sections, but it's nowhere near as tough as the last stretch. We do it more or less non-stop, mainly because when we do stop for only about 5 minutes, hordes of leeches start crawling up our boots.
We reach Tharepati at 3pm and check into a horrible poky lodge with the worst facilities we've had so far, including no water to wash in, despite the rain. I have to go into the kitchen to request some sort of vessel to collect rainwater, where I discover they've been hording all the rainwater they've collected for cooking. The staff here seem to be very young: it's almost as though the lodge is being run by kids, and I wonder where their parents are. The three girls are all very boisterous and one of them, the ringleader, keeps trying to get me to buy beer.
"And they're so vulgar," says Siling, who keeps getting abuse from one of the boys. He escapes to join me and an elderly French lady trekker playing cards in the lounge. Maila takes the staff up on their offer of whiskey in the kitchen.
Despite a leak in my ceiling which deposits rainwater in the gap between the two beds and drips incessantly through the night, I go to sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, and sleep soundly. In the morining Siling is annoyed because he says the kids were stamping up and down the corridors of the lodge, shouting, farting and giggling until late last night.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Next
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