Nepal Trekking
I wanted to hike in the Himalayas to truly experience their majestic and rugged beauty. We signed up with an experienced trekking agency that was very thorough in describing the hiking, and ensuring that we had all the appropriate clothing and gear for a successful journey. Our English speaking Nepalese guide took excellent care of us all along the way, and prepared us well for each day’s undertaking. Our porter was a man smaller and thinner than me who carried our 50 lbs of clothing and gear along all the miles of trails that we covered.
That picture above was the first of many suspension bridges we crossed. For our first two days, we basically parallelled the course of the Budhi Gandaki River.
I’ll summarize all the stats at the end of our trip, but just know that we covered 38 km (24.5 miles) in those first two days, and sweated a lot as we hiked. We started at about 3,000 ft of elevation. They grow bananas here!
The ranks of hills…
…definitely grew more imposing as we hiked on –
This was a common sight…
… and we quickly learned how to safely pass donkey trains heading at us – stay on the side of the trail that is against the mountain, so they won’t nudge you off. For the next video, click the link at the bottom of the post to open it in your browser, so you can watch it.
As that train passed us, I was telling the one donkey that got out of line and headed for me, “This is my rock and I’m staying here”. As you probably noticed, none of the donkeys had lead ropes or were tied to another. The driver of the train always brought up the rear, and usually there were one or two stragglers walking slowly after him. The driver in the video said “Namaste!” as he passed. This is a common greeting in Nepal.
one of those stragglers I mentioned
We saw several interesting things being carried by people (rather than donkeys), like rolls of tubing…
… and a large water storage container (1,000 liters) -
This bridge was called Long Bridge, and it truly was the longest one we tramped over -
Here’s another view of Long Bridge after we crossed it and continued upriver -
As we slowly climbed higher, we saw more snowy peaks -
The trek we were on was called the Manaslu Circuit. It is a less traveled trek than Everest Basecamp or the Annapurna Circuit, and that is exactly why I chose it. Mt. Manaslu is in the western portion of Nepal and is the 8th highest mountain in the world at 8163 m (26,781 ft). My favorite morning (our fourth) was when I got up to catch sunrise lighting up Manaslu…
… and the peaks around it -
That day we started by visiting a new Buddhist temple…
… that wasn’t occupied yet -
My favorite day continued with us climbing really high into yak pastures…
can you see the yaks and stupa in the lower center?
… to reach the Pungen Gompa Monastery at 13,175 ft (4016 m). The yaks were as peaceful as the surroundings -
The monastery was very simple…
… but the setting was just superb -
I’ll share more pictures in the next post, as we continued climbing ever higher.