A year away: November 2010

Well I'm back in Kathmandu and I'm flying out to Bangkok this afternoon. I'll try to give you all a quick recap of the second part of my trekking in the Everest region at least...still wishing for a fast internet connection and a keyboard without sticking keys. In Nepal, yeah right!

The view from Kongma La

On top of Kongma La, I was pretty tired!!

From Chhukung I headed over my first pass - Kongma La (5535m), starting at dawn. The ascent was long and arduous, first crossing a large, rocky glacier followed by a long climb up a grassy valley and then an incredibly steep ascent to a group of high lakes just below the pass. The higher I went the tougher it got - the altitude really starts to slow you down at 5000m+ - but the views just kept getting better. I reached the pass after about 4.5 hours and rested there for maybe 45 min, taking in the mountain and lakes all around. The weather up there was perfect - just a gentle breeze, bright sun and even though I was above 5500m it was really quite warm. The descent was steep but the real killer came right at the end - the last hour of the trek was traversing another large glacier. To get across this one I had to climb up one side (60 or 70m on gravel), follow a faint and tortuous path across the surface of the glacier, up and down on gravel and rocks, avoiding huge ice holes and lakes and the like then scramble off the glacier, first up to the top of the morraine then down. Finally the village of Lobuche (4902m) came into sight...it's a crap hole of a place but I really needed to rest!

From Lobuche I made a very early start the next day to get to Gorak Shep (5160m) - there is a big accommodation shortage here and I wanted a place to sleep that wasn't the lodge dining room. I secured a room, ate a big breakfast and walked the couple of hours north from Gorak Shep to Everest Base Camp. Frankly there's very little of the actual camp to see here in this season - teams use the camp only in the Everest climing season (April, I think) so it's deserted and only a few signs of habitation remain. The setting however is amazing - you can't actually see Everest because you're too close but the shear walls leading up to Pumo Ri (to the west) and Nuptse (to the east) are beyond massive, and you're right at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall and beside Khumbu Glacier, the craziest and most convoluted glacial surface I've ever seen. The other plus is that pretty much no one makes the trek all the way to the actual camp area so I was alone on the glacier for awhile. Not bad at all! Next day I woke before dawn and headed up the nearby and very popular peak of Kala Pattar (5545m). For some reason I really struggled with this climb - I felt rather nauseous and unwell, but I made it to the top. The weather was a little cloudy and it even snowed a tiny bit on the way up but as I sat at the top the clouds mostly cleared and I had some pretty amazing views.

At Everest Base Camp - massive peaks in the background (not incl. Everest)

Base Camp, looking south. Not a very comfy camping spot I'd say.

Sunrise through the clouds from Kala Pattar

Cool stepped glacier, from Kala Pattar

From Lobuche I headed down and then up again to Dzongla (4840m), the starting point for the second of the 3 passes - Cho La (5420m) which was to prove the trickiest of the lot. The scenery heading up the valley to Dzongla was amazing - the biggest and steepest glacier I've seen emptying into Chola Tsho - a stunning blue lake with a backdrop of vertical rock cliffs heading up a couple of thousand metres to the peak of Cholatse. Wow. As I neared Dzongla around 11am it began to snow...and didn't let up until the following morning. This was a bad sign for an easy crossing of the pass. In the morning as the snow stopped and the sun came out I tried without success to find others that planned to attempt the pass. In the end I made the decision to abort the crossing - without a guide it would be impossible to follow the trail - and to walk around (the long way) instead. After 2 full days of walking and passing along some roads (OK, tracks) less travelled I arrived at the village on the other side of the pass. The walk was in parts interesting since I passed some really cool summer grazing villages with stone buildings that seemed trapped 400 or 500 years in the past, but mostly long. I arrived pretty much exhausted. Next day I passed over the nearby glacier - this one wasn't so tough - and reached the village of Gokyo on the shores of the amazingly picturesque Gokyo Lake.

Chola Tsho on the way to Dzongla - massive glacier in the background. It's HUGE

Chola Tsho the next morning

Waking up to clear weather and snow...beautiful but not good for crossing a high pass.

The start of the walk from Dzongla instead of over the pass - everything looks very different with a dusting of snow

Stone cottages along the path on the long walk from Dzongla, around to the other side of the pass

Yak above Gokyo Lake

From Gokyo I walked up the popular Gokyo Ri, a peak of 5480m with amazing views over the lake and beyond. The colour of the lake is amazing as you can see in the photos. The next day we climbed up to the last pass - Renjo La (5345m) - the lowest and easiest of the passes by far. It took only 2 hours to get up there from Gokyo, taking it really slowly. From Renjo, 2 more long downhill days of walking had us back in Lukla and eating meat and drinking beer for the first time in over 2 weeks - well deserved I'd say! From Lukla I set out on the next stage of my trek, 9 days to the SE to the town of Tumlingtar, through mostly lowland forest and farmland. It was certainly very different to the 2 weeks in EBC area and I'll write about it soon.

On top of Renjo La

Yak grazing on...not much, below Renjo La


Typical stupa, on the last days of walking. Somehow you can get blasé about this kind of scenery...

Rustic teahouse below Namche

Porters - with beer

Meat!

Once again it has been too long since I have had a chance to work on the blog. Since I'm in Nepal now and some of you are wanting to see photos and to have a bit of a rundown on what I've been doing over here I will do my best to update you. The images and updates for Eastern Europe and Turkey will have to wait.

Firstly, here is a set of photos on Photobucket I'm working on uploading. I will add more as I have time. Click the link and you'll be able to see them all.

http://s757.photobucket.com/albums/xx220/thomasphenley/nepal/

My original plan was to arrive in Kathmandu, spend a few days and then head into the mountains. I didn't have a detailed plan as to where I wanted to go, other than up. The trip from Istanbul, through Munich and Delhi was drawn out to say the least and I was happy to sleep in a real bed after so many hours on planes and transit lounge seats. In KTM I met up with the American guy (named England) who I'd travelled with in China. He'd been up in the Everest Base Camp (EBC) area a couple of weeks before and was able to give me a lot of really useful advice about what to do and where to go. Using his advice in combination with the Lonely Planet trekking in the Himalaya guidebook I decided to attempt the "Three Passes" trek in the EBC area - it's nominally 20 days long and involves the crossing of 3 generally non-technical passes of about 5,300-5,500m and several minor peaks as side trips. The trek is possible in both CW or CCW directions; I opted for CCW, meaning I would approach the passes from the East and descent to the West - gentler ascents, steeper descents. I've "borrowed" a map below to show you where I hiked, not that it's probably too useful without some context - this whole area is to the NW of Kathmandu - somewhere near here. As I mentioned there are 3 passes to cross - Kongma La (5535m), Cho La (5420m) and Renjo La (5345m), so the highest is first. That should make the others seem easy! I planned to go without a porter or guide, which is perfectly normal except that I would have to carry my own 12 or 13kg worth of gear. On this route you don't need a tent, food or cooking equipment since there are "teahouses" all along the route, so will take only a few snacks to supplement the high-priced mountain food.

Before setting out to the mountains I took a few days to look around Kathmandu and 2 days for a quick rafting trip. The chaos of Kathmandu is hard to describe other than that it's a pretty intense place. I hope some of the pics below and in the link to Photobucket will show you a bit of what I saw. The rafting trip was good fun and although it was my first time I didn't really feel challenged by the rapids we ran. We'd been promised something tougher, and that didn't materialise (allegedly due to too high water levels/flows). Unfortunately I don't have any pics of the rafting - it's not a good idea to take a non-waterproof camera on white water!

Temple in Kathmandu

After the rafting was done I was off to the mountains....eventually. It's most common to fly to the town of Lukla to start trekking in the EBC area - you can hike in but it's a 6 day slog and didn't sound like a whole lot of fun, so I bought my ticket a few days in advance and headed expectantly to the airport. My flight was scheduled for 9am but I was given a boarding pass for the 10am flight. Why? No explanation...welcome to the non-customer service oriented customer service of Agni Airlines. Hmm, not a great start. After waiting all day at the airport without any clear idea of what was happening or going to happen, and only 2 flights leaving, the rest of the flights were cancelled and we were advised to rebook though our ticketing agents. What?! You can't/won't rebook us for one of tomorrow's flights? You mean we get bumped to the BACK of the queue now? And all the flights for the next couple of days are full?! This is how you treat passengers who you've already left in the dark for 8 hours? Wow. After some time and by resisting the urge to strangle the staff I did manage to get booked onto a flight, but not for 2 days. Turns out many people had been waiting days so I should consider myself lucky... The reason seems to be that since 3 planes have been lost (ie crashed, killing everybody on board) in the past few years at Lukla they tend to be very cautious about flying in poor weather these days, or even if it's cloudy. Agni Airlines actually dropped the most recent one back in August killing 16 I believe....I didn't know that when I booked the ticket! Hence few flights can get through if the weather's less than perfect, which it had been the last few days. So back to the guesthouse for a wasted day in KTM and back to the airport at the crack of dawn on the day of my newly booked flight. This time I was lucky and I squeezed onto the first flight of the day (my ticket was for the 3rd, I think). After some messing about we were airborne on a borrowed plane not showing Agni signwriting - maybe this is the replacement for the one they crashed a couple of months ago. Let's hope they get this one on the ground safely. The flight was quick and the landing smooth. Lukla (2800m) was chilly in the early morning and I quickly got my walking underway.

In the air and on the way to Lukla - my first views of the mountains

Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, lower hills

Cool mani stone in technicolor - they're not normally this colourful

The first day took me about 5.5 hours to reach the town of Namche Bazaar at just over 3400m where I spent 2 nights as the first stage of my altitude acclimitisation. The ascent up the valley passed through many small and picturesque villages with distant views of Everest and regular views of Ama Dablam. Slowly the vegetation started to take on a sub-alpine nature. Namche is a busy town set in a natural amphitheatre-shaped bowl on a steep mountain side and is of historical importance as a trading post in the grain-for-salt trade between Tibet and Nepal. Now it's just a major trekking hub and is jammed full of trekking lodges and shops - it's an OK place to pass through but not to stay for a long time - this is not exactly roughing it. This is the first place I've ever hiked where there is serious concern about going up too fast, and the potentially deadly effects of altitude sickness, so I planned to play it safe (if not 100% by the book - the book is pretty conservative!) On the rest day I did a day hike to a town a few hundred metres above Namche and back down.

From Namche the next few days took me up the eastern-most valley on the map above to the towns of Tengboche (3870m), Dingboche (4410m) and Chhukung (4730m) with a stop in Dingboche and Chhukung for second and third acclimitisation days. By this time I was starting to get some seriously upclose views of the big mountains I'd come to see - awesome. I hope some of the photos will do the views justice. On the rest day in Dingboche I took a day hike up to a lake and glacier at about 4700m which was simply spectacular. From Chhukung I climbed the peaks of Chhukung Ri (5500m) and Chhukung Tse (5800m) to reach the highest point of the trip and of my life - and much to my surprise I felt strong and handled the altitude well. Also from Chhukung I visited Island Peak Base Camp and the vast glacial lake of Imja Tso at around 5000m - the views of this unusual gray-green coloured lake set against the confluence of so many massive glaciers and behind them, peaks and unfathomably vast walls of ice were some of the most awe-inspiring of the whole trip.