details of the trek, Part One

Hi folks, It's Joanne, and I finally decided it was time for me to tackle the telling of the tale of the ever so fabulous 15 day trek we took while in Nepal in May. My memory may not be as sharp on some of the details as it might have been had I gotten to this long ago, but thankfully I've kept a journal and can also bug Jessica every few minutes with my eternal questions that always begin with 'Do you remember...?' So here goes.

After the hellish bus ride up from Kathmandu and being deposited in a dirty little mountain village, which looked something like heaven to us, we slept the slumber of the dead and woke at around 6:30 A.M., which would become our custom, (I know you're already having a hard time believing this story) and ready for a brand new day, not to mention, deliriously happy to be alive. We were only a few miles from Tibet border, and wishing we could go there too, but were prepared to walk all the way back to Kathmandu, as opposed to ever getting back on a bus again, which was exactly our plan.

The day rose sunny and warm and we breakfasted with the little family who owned the Lama Hotel, tasting our very first Tibetan bread, which was to become a staple in our diet. It was pretty much like a thick, hot and steaming pita bread, cooked over an open flame in a pan, where everything else was cooked. No ovens or stoves for these simple people. Just a makeshift kitchen, a fire and a pan or two. The bread tasted delicious and even the Nescafe coffee tasted just like Starbucks to me that morning. Over breakfast, we decided we would trek with our new Swiss/Italian speaking friends we had met on the bus ride up - Stefano and Lorenzo, as well as their guide Ram. (Ram means God in Napalese. Quite the auspicious name, eh?) We were ready to begin the challenge of our lives.

Jessica, our guide, Babu, our porter, Mahesh (who carried our one big travel pack into which we consolidated all that we needed for 15 days in the mountains), Stafano, Lorenzo, Ram and I started off through our tiny village, winding past the opened front doors of the townspeople's homes. All the little red cheeked children were on their way to school and each and every one cried out 'Namaste!' to us, and even 'hello' sometimes. They all learn English from their first days in school, which is a very nice thing for us. It made communication much easier, since we knew only a very few words in Nepalese by that time. By the way, the greeting 'namaste' literally means, 'The divine in me recognizes the divine in you.' A bit wordy in English, but absolutely lovely in their language.

We entered our first National Park by signing in at a tiny rustic army outpost station and began our trip in ernest. We came almost immediately to a suspension bridge which crossed a rushing river far below us, which would become our constant companion for the next several days. In the distance we saw the first white peaks of the Lang Tang Mountain Range, our destination. On the other side of the river we came upon thousands and thousands of marijuana plants growing freely on the sides of the path and in vast fields. It seems it's legal for marijuana to grow and harvest, but illegal to buy, sell or smoke. Hmmmmmm. Anyway, our first day was beginning beautifully. The going was not too tough, and mostly sloping easily downhill at first. I had my trusty knee braces firmly wrapped on each limb, preparing for the eventual pain that has been creeping into my reality for the last two years each time I hike downhill after a strenuous climb. Luckily, we were going up up up for a long time to come.

We discovered the way of the tea houses. On the Lang Tang trail, or any other mountain trail, there are no such things as hotels or motels or anything like that. Instead, each and every home we came to along the way was a 'tea house', meaning that they serve tea, which we drank by the gallon, and offered a standardized menu of everything from noodle dishes, soups, breads, rice and some desert items, as well as provide a cheap bed, and I'm talking literally 50 cents, for trekkers. They were very rustic buildings and incredibly cheap. Mostly they were wooden structures, with no heat or electricity, containing a few bedrooms with smaller than twin size beds holding thin foam 'mattresses'. We had rented sleeping bags and down jackets in Kathmandu, so we were ready for the eventual cold that we would envelop us on and off during the next two weeks.

So up down then up we went, stopping every 2 hours or so for tea. We discovered the wonderful lemon tea that they offered, and also a spicy ginger tea, jasmine and of course, black. A quick side note here. When I met Stefano, he was absolutely unable to remember my name and kept calling me Jasmine. The name stuck, and to this day, I usually introduce myself as Jasmine, though Jess has a habit of calling me by my real name and ruining the effect for me every so often, and then I have to explain the story.... But Jasmine IS rather exotic, isn't it? Jessica decided that my rapper name should be Jasmine T. It's got a nice ring to it, eh? Anyway, eventually the trail began to climb seriously and we got the first taste of Himalayan mountain trekking. I don't know what we were thinking it was gonna be like, but we began our very steep ascent as soon as lunch was over. Our legs moaned and groaned and we were often short of breath, stopping to take breaks pretty darn often. The day grew hot and sunny, even in shade of the trees and the coolish breeze provided by the rushing of the river next to us. But we soon discovered that this was going to be no picnic. The most hiking I had ever done before this was to Mt. Monadnock a few times a year, which takes about 3 or 4 hours to climb and come down from. We were to be trekking between 6 and 10 hours a day up and down mountain trails, we were soon to discover.

So we toughened our minds and bodies and began to get into it. Our first day was comprised of probably about 6 hours of trekking and a few hours of rest. We had travelled several kilometers and seen so many wonderful things. The families that greeted us at each tea house were incredibly sweet! Invariably there were women and children running the place, and let me tell you that the children worked, no matter what their tender age.