Nepal March/April 2023
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Mani wall on Manaslu Circuit
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Rani
has been fascinated by Everest in particular and the Himalayas in general for decades. She meant to go trekking there long ago but
other adventures and life got in the way. My brother, Mike, has
visited Nepal several times and has been pushing us both to do a trek
while we are still young enough to pull it off and enjoy it. He
warned us that there has been a lot of development since he first
started trekking in the early 90's. In particular there are now roads
in places where there used to be mountain tracks. These roads are a
boon for the villagers who are now connected with the rest of the
country via buses and high clearance vehicles. However, they have
transformed the areas through which they pass. Typically they have
been built on top of the older foot and mule trails.
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Waiting for a lunch hand out
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The
most popular options for trekking in Nepal are Everest base camp in
the Khumbu region and the Annapurna circuit - a route to the west of
Everest that goes around the Annapurna range. Because of the
popularity of these two treks and the fact that roads have replaced
much of the trail around Annapurna, we did not consider these
options, but instead looked for areas that would be less traveled and
into which few roads had been cut.
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Stupa near Nar Village
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Why
Manaslu?
We
initially planned to visit the Annapurna Sanctuary. This would allow
us to see forests of Rhododendron trees that should be in their
spring bloom. We decided against this, because we felt it would be
too short a trek and we wanted to experience greater diversity. After
looking through the treks offered by Nepalese trekking companies, we
settled on a circuit of mount Manaslu, which is the eighth highest
mountain in Nepal and one of the 8000 meter mountains. This trek can
be done as a two week circuit that begins and ends in the same place
and is typically accessed by Jeep or bus from Kathmandu. It can also
be combined with other treks into more remote valleys, which is what
we decided to do.
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Early light on the mountains that enclose Larke Pass
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The company we selected, Wilderness Excursions,
offered a Manaslu trek combined with a week in the Nar and Phu
valleys. This was a 25 day excursion, including 2 days to get there
and back. We had them add a 6 day side trek into the
Tibetan-flavoured Tsum Valley, which is accessed as a side trip near
the beginning the Manaslu circuit. These additional treks would take
us far to the west of our starting point and we would finish on a
portion of the Annapurna circuit and drive and fly back to Kathmandu
from there. It turned out that we bit off a bit more than was
probably wise, with 28 days of walking between 5 and 9 hours each
day. We added in 2 days in Pokhara at the end to relax, but in
retrospect, two to three weeks of walking would have been plenty. A
few additional rest days would also have made the trip a lot more
relaxed!
Preparations
We
arranged to hire a guide and porter through Wilderness Excursions,
which meant that we would not need to carry large packs. The porter
would carry about 10 kgs for each of us. The guide would also take
care of arranging hotels and on behalf the agency would pay for
accommodations and food for us all. Using an agency appears to be
mandatory for the areas that require permits because only agencies
can obtain the permits. Ideally we would have hired a guide and
porter directly, if it had been feasible, because this would put more
money into the hands of the people who are actually doing the work.
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Boats on lake at Pokhara
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We
settled on packs of 30 and 35 liters, which would be large enough to
carry bulky warm weather gear, snacks, and water as well as camera
equipment. These weighed between 8 and 10 kilos, depending on the
weather and who was carrying the heavy full frame SLR camera
equipment.
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Monastery entrance gate in Tsum Valley
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We
had heard that the food available at the tea houses can be a bit
monotonous and we might go hungry in between meals, so we prepared
large quantities of snack food including home made energy bars, nuts,
dates, Indian sweets, and chocolate. This proved to be overkill as
the tea houses served a large variety of meals and always in large
helpings. Our poor porter ended up carrying much of these snacks for
far longer than he should have and we gave away quite a few sweet
items as we went along.
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On the way to Larke Pass
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The
trekking agency provided a recommended gear list. This included 4
each of various clothing items. In retrospect next time we would
bring about half this amount because we had selected long wearing
items made of merino wool that lasted a few days without needing a
wash. We were able to wash clothes at some of the tea houses and they
usually dried overnight. Washing lines were available or you could
drape them over a balcony railing to dry.
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Kathmandu marigold sellers
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Items
that proved to be valuable were washing powder to clean clothes, head
lamps for use when the power was turned off or unavailable in the tea
houses, our e-readers, good hiking boots, toilet paper, and sleeping
bag liners. The tea houses all provided at least one light quilt but we used our down filled sleeping bags almost every night. In some colder places a second quilt could often be
obtained if required. Good, broken-in boots were invaluable and
neither of us had blisters in 28 days of walking.
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| Mount Manaslu is over 8000 meters |
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Other items we
needed in a few places were gaters to keep snow out of the boots on
the passes and at Manaslu base camp as well as strap on microspikes
(mini-crampons), which were very helpful on the two passes we
crossed. We were able to buy the gaters and crampons in Kathmandu and
also saw them for sale in Pokhara and Manang. Some of the small
villages, in which the tea houses are located had stores where we
were able to buy snacks, handcrafts, and trekking necessaries such as
toilet paper. These come at a marked up price, of course, because of
the difficulty of getting them there via mule, porter, or jeep.
Another good thing to bring is a few items to repair broken gear,
including super glue, and duct tape. We used both to repair the
hiking pole we bought in Kathmandu when the handle popped off.
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Pilgrims pass under the water spouts at Muktinath
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Getting
There
Rani
flew via New Delhi India, because she was visiting family there for a
few weeks before the trek. The problem with this option is that you
need an Indian tourist visa to do this from Vancouver because the
flight arrives in New Delhi late at night and the next flight to
Kathmandu is the next day. Obtaining a tourist visa to India took
about 2 months and an in person visit to Surrey, so I would not
recommend this route unless you plan to visit India for more than an
evening. Chris flew to Kathmandu from Vancouver via Singapore with
Singapore Airlines, which proved to be a good way to go. When you
arrive in Kathmandu, you have to pay for a tourist visa. The regular
one is for 30 days and costs 50 US dollars (they accept Canadian
dollars too, but oddly do not accept Nepalese rupees). We paid for
the 90 days visa, which is $150 US dollars. We could have obtained a
30 day visa and then extended this to 45 days, which was a little
longer than our total stay but this would have required a separate
visit to a consular office and a probably a couple more hours of bureaucracy.
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Niece of a tea house owner in Phu village won Rani's heart
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Please check out our Youtube slide show for a full set
of pictures with some labels in roughly chronological order. Video is available in HD but you may have to explicitly set this when you play it using the Settings icon.
