Karen's Damn Long Walk

Now it is important that you understand that a rest day, whilst on a damn long walk,  is not like a Sunday sprawled on the couch, with a bag of chippies, a beer, and Netflix.

First thing to do is hike about 350 metres  up a hill at absolute snails pace, one slow step after the other. This is necessary to assist with acclimatization. We need to have been higher during  than we are to sleep at night.

This arduous walk was well worth it for the views of the mountains and the valley below. We stopped at a stupor, which is built to honor the dead and for a break at a wee tea house. We didn’t buy anything as we had bottles of electrolyte solution that we had to drink. We need to have a litre of that a day and another 3 litres of fluid. Obviously, I did need to use his toilet.

The hard walk was well worth it as at the top was a one woman monastery. We were shown around her home, which was built in a cave  on a steep cliff. Then we were invited in for a  ceremony and received a blessing to give us luck going over the pass. A necklace was put around our neck, and then she asked for 100 rupee donation. So another scramble through the money bag in the dark. I hope her blessing works.

She is  75 year old female monk, and we were told that she was completely snowed in for 21 days straight last winter. But it wasn’t so bad this year as she had a solar powered battery and a light bulb. Tough lady.

After that wee jaunt we have jobs to do. Clothes are washed.

• The first cycle is stomping on them on the floor while having a just-warm shower
• The second cycle is a rinse in the bucket that provides clean water to wash your bum with.
• Then wring out as much water as you can by hand
• Find a line in the sun with a breeze and hang up with the 5 pegs I have brought from home. Sometimes lucky enough to supplement with pegs provided.

Other jobs  include tipping everything out of my pack to find the one item I have lost.  Kay and I both seem to lose something that we have put in a safe place on a regular basis.

Updating our social media, attending to feet, reading and chatting with other trekkers, and shopping takes up time, too.  We bought chocolate, sweets and biscuits for the Pass day as we will be about 10 hours before a tea house.

A large family group was staying here. One was a Nepalese man who lived in the next village until he was 9 years old. He then moved to Switzerland. He had brought back about 12 members of his family to see his birth place. Having arrived by Jeep, they were celebrating with bottles of the local whiskey. They were a fun lot.

Again we walked the first half of the day on the old trail. Having a total elevation gain of about 250 metres meant we were heading higher. The trail had some ups and downs but nothing too bad.

Slowly, slowly, our Guide, Basu, tells us. As if I could go fast in this elevation. We are at about 2,00 metres above sea level, so we are already lacking oxygen.  Looking back at my diary, I saw that I was struggling to go slow last time I was here. Puru had to walk in front of me to slow me down. But 17 years later, my guide waits at the top of the hill for me.

Lunch at a really cute we teahouse. It had ony one room where they slept cooked and ate and served meals. Dal Bhat was the only thing on menu and it takes about 30 mins to cook and smells delicious. We take off our shoes and lay down to rest. So I am ready to eat when it arrives.

Our guide and porter serve us. They stand and wait until we have had a few mouthfuls and give our approval before they disappear to eat their lunch.

We keep getting rooms on the 3rd floor. They may have a view, but we think we have walked up enough steps

We showed the owners my photos from 17 years ago only to find that the adults had died and the kids had all left the village.

We started our day at 6.15am with a taxi ride with our guide, Basu, to the city bus station. There we met Ram who is to be our porter for the trek.

Kay and I are quite capable of carrying our own gear, but we wanted to make sure we contributed to the economy.  So we will pack a duffle bag each with the stuff we don’t need through the day and he will carry it for us. We are allowed a maximum of 10kg each but it will be more like 5kg each. He will be a happy porter!!

The bus ride took about 10 hours. The first 5 or 6 were fun but after that it became quite a mission of indurance

The bus was a Delux model boasting wifi, a toilet, TV, charging points, and being on time. It certainly wasn’t a deluxe experience and had only one TV screen playing hours of Bollywood music videos. No wifi or toilet or charging points.

3 young guys hung out the door all day, calling out to potential customers, even though the bus was full from the start.

It took about 2 hours to get through the city and then we we were off over some high mountain passes, up and down, around tight corners, beeping all the way.

Our driver was a bit like a young Kiwi male. He had to overtake anything that he came up behind, even if there was only 10 meters clear road ahead. Beep, beep, crunch the gears, and shut our eyes, and he would go like a bat out of hell.

Kay and I were calling out to any God who was listening to savevus  but the locals just sat there hardly changing their expressions at all.

The first few hours was the highway to India where mist of  the goods to cater for 8 million Nepalese come from. The brightly colored and decorated trucks and buses were continually trying to out do each other and the thousands of motor bikes, cars and vans.

The Chinese are upgrading the roads, putting in tunnels that will take hours off the journey. However, the constant road works really slowed us down. It was quite scary at times looking over the steep banks and seeing workers building retaining walls below us. So there was nothing holding the road up now.

I offered Kay the window seat after an hour and she was adamant that she did not want to see what was going on beside our bus. So if the bus tipped over, it would be me scraping my face on the road.

Next bus instead of walking. Lady car sick plastic bag gave away my goid zip lock bag for her to be dick in and she didn’t even offer it back to me.

The last hour before Besisahar was when we had both had enough. There was lots of little villages and everytime we had to slow down and pick and drop off passengers. The bus got very full and hot. It was a9bout 30° outside and hotter inside. Never the less the windows did open but then there was dust to deal with. We had had enough by the time we arrived in Besisahar.

Besisahar was the end of the road 17 years ago. I remember the streets were full of donkey trains, their bells ringing and really making me smile. This was where I began walking in 2006. Not this time. Buses, trucks, jeeps, and motorbikes filled the narrow streets, spewing out smoke to add to the dust.

By the time our bus arrived, we had settled down and we re ready for the last hours drive. This time, we were sqaushed in the very back seat. Not far down the road, a local lady sirting next to Kay started to heave and call out “plastic bag, plastic bag.”

Being an experienced traveler, I had a decent sized zip lock bag in my bag exactly for this kind of situation. So I whipped it out and saved the day.

Our accommodation for he night was very bright and comfortable. We even had a hot shower.