Nepal (under construction)

Days 189 - 235: Nepal

To put it sımply, after visiting 15 countries, Nepal was (and is) our favorite . . . . Ahhh, Nepal. From the moment we crossed the border (following a most infuriating 2-day busride from India, crammed into a seat fit for a small child . . . tricked again by those wily Indians! Damn!), we fell in love with this country: bus-bleary eyes awakened by massive peaks; terraced rice paddies that ascend 1000's of feet from the valley floor; churning, massive rivers aglow with silvery glacial runoff; tiny villages perched way, way up, amongst rocky slopes and distant glaciers. Soon we would be trekking for weeks at a time amongst these glaciers, past these most remote villages, to holy lakes and peaktops.

Nepal has it all: smiling, welcoming people; wonderful food (ok, after weeks on end of dal baht--the Nepali staple of rice, lentils and a curried vegetable--most travelers to Nepal may not agree with us, but we loved it!); Buddhist temples dotting the countryside; ancient, crumbling Newari architecture; and, of course, the gnarliest, most stunning mountains in the world - the mighty Himalayas.

Forget the Alps, Rockies, Sierras, Cascades (big mountains that we know and love); the Himalayas are in a different league. They are just HUGE and jagged and FRESH, as though they just popped out of the Earth's crust. Our first up-close glimpse came while journeying to the village of Seyabrubesi, the jump-off point for our first trek, 7 days into the Langtang Valley, home to 7500 meter peaks, just a few miles from Tibet. A good warm-up before we started on a 18-day trek to Mt. Everest base camp and the holy lakes of Gokyo. Clinging to the roof of a rickety, public bus blaring fast, high-pitched folk music ("shwingy-dingy" music), seated next to farmers and chicken cages, we gawked at the 4,000 feet of AIR (!) beneath our feet (and gawking at the fact that it took us 9 hours to travel just 85 miles!!). This was the absolute scariest road we've ever seen, 10-feet of dirt cut into the mountainsıde, half way up a 8,000 vertical foot valley! The valleys just kept going up and up and up.


Walking down the streets of Thamel (Nepal's version of Khao San Road ın Bangkok) amid restaurants that would fit right in in San Francisco (Who would have thought you could have a good burrıto for breakfast, sushi for lunch, a huge steak for dinner ın Nepal) and vendors sellıng any outdoor gear you could possibly want (knock-offs, of course, but pretty remarkable ones at that), ıt was hard to believe that we were actually ın Nepal. But once we escaped the madness that ıs Kathmandu and hopped on the bus, heading for our first hike in the mighty Himalayas, we started to see what is, in essence, the 'real Nepal'. Where small houses and villages cling to jaw-droppingly steep hillsides. People eke out an existence on narrow strips of land that look more like a staircases down the mountainside than crops. Yaks, not cars, carry supplies to villages that are days away from the nearest road.



As we were told that it is imperative to get to the airport two hours before your domestic flight, we made sure to get there on time, only to be told that the check-in desk did not open for another 30 minutes. Great. So we waited at the desk for the thirty minutes watching the airlıne personnel behind the desk chatting and laughing and casually sipping their tea while we stood there. When the thirty minutes were up, the woman steps up to the desk and tells us that we have been 'switched to another airline', that our flight will be leaving two hours later than the one we were originally on, and that we must now go stand in line at the new airline's counter. Umm, what?? We have been switched to a completely different airline?? And thanks for the no heads up when we first arrived.

The flight to Lukla was an adventure in its own right. The 12-seater plane flew along side the Himalayas for the entire 45 minute flight. When we reached Lukla, we saw that the landing strip. . . .