13/4/02
Tashi Delek!!!!
Hey there dudes and dudettes and other furry animals…
Well here we are in Kathmandu again after 25 days of absolutely exhausting trekking to Mount Everest Base Camp…. and all I can say is…. we are ABSOLUTELY and COMPLETELY 100% SHAGGED!!!! ….that’s more shagged than a very shaggy thing in shagsville…. which by the way is quite SHAGGED….
HOLY SHIT… was it bloody HARD or what??!!!… MAN… THAT WAS THE HARDEST THING WE HAVE EVER EVER EVER DONE IN OUR ENTIRE LIFE!!!!
In fact, there were days when the trekking was so hard that we actually cried and the tears almost froze our face off…
Dudes, we basically trekked for 25 days with hugely heavy backpacks and there were days when the temperature was minus 15 degrees and the air was so thin that we huffed and puffed and almost blew ourselves down…
In anycase, we’ve split the travellog into to 2 parts as it was such a big trip that we have so much to write about….
So…… as in our last email… Parker, me and Avril hooked up with 2 germans Mathis and Ulrich and a dutch girl Mijke and 25 days ago we left Katmandu for a town called Jiri in the Himilayan foothills which is on the traditional route that Hillary and other famous dudes used…
Most people bypass this leg of the trail these days as there is an airport closer to Everest at Lukla and the trail that we took also takes you through Maoist (terrorist ) controlled areas so it often freaks people out…
In actual fact, we went to a slide show the night before we left Katmandu and were given the impression by a wanker expat that without a porter or guide, we would probably die a horrible death at the hands of terrorists, or we’d probably choke to death from the altitude… He didn’t mention death by falling into the hole in the drop toilets, but I would have to say that is a definite danger too!!!!!
Needless to say, we shat ourselves for a while and then decided that being naive tourists was probably a good thing and we would do the trail anyway without a guide…
Well I have to say that although there were days on the trek when the walking was physically and mentally one of the hardest things we have ever done… we also found it to be absolutely amazing too…
In the first week down in the foothills, we basically trekked along ridges and valleys overlooking glacial rivers with hillsides that were spotted with beautiful pinks, whites and reds from rhododendron bushes which are Nepal’s national flower…
… and all the time we were walking with local sherpa porters carrying loads of 30kgs or more to the many little villages along the way, so it gave a us a great sense that we were sharing their lifestyle…
Also most of the teahouses we stayed in were Sherpa family homes and often we would just sit in their kitchen and drink tea which was great as there were very few tourists on the trail due to the troubles… and they really made us feel welcome.
The only thing that sucked was that the heat was stiffling and my pack weighed 19kg and the trail ended up traversing across the ridges of the valleys instead of with them, so there were days when we would ascend 1000m only to descend the same distance at the end of the day… Honestly, I don’t think my knees and ankles will ever be the same again…
Well, we didn’t end up seeing any Moaists on the trail, but we came across a couple that had been held up by Maoists at gunpoint. However the Maoists really just wanted money and then gave them a receipt to show any other Maoists along the way that they had already given money. How thoughtful!!!
But later we found out that some trekkers had encountered up to 100 armed Moaists that were threatening to destroy some of the lodges in an area we were staying at only a couple of days before… so it was a bit freaky hearing that. But in actual fact despite there being armed terrorists on the trail, the thing that freaked us out the most were the YAKS!!!!!!
Man, those yaks are FREAKY dudes!!!!! I ended up getting jabbed in the ribs by a yak that was blocking our trail (well… I was trying to push it out of the way) and more than once, Avril had yaks charge at her…
Basically we found that the 2 indisputable laws of nature in Nepal are…
1) YAK + MOMENTUM = GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE
AND
2) THE HAIRIER THEY ARE, THE SCARIER THEY ARE…
And not only are they freaky when they are alive, but as Nepal is a Hindu state, you aren’t allowed to kill them for meat, but if they fall off the trail and die, then you’re TOTALLY allowed to eat them… which we sort of did just to get revenge, but sure as shit, even in death, those yaks gave us diarrhea….. doh!!!
Man how dumb are we… that’s like eating Nepal’s equivalent of roadkill and considering there is no refrigeration other than the natural cold… no wonder we got sick. Also I reckon the locals must push the odd yak of a cliff just to get the road kill.
So anyhows… after about 9 days of trekking, we eventually made it up the Khumbu Valley towards Everest and that very first sight of Everest was absolutely breath taking making all the days of hardship and yakphobia really worthwhile…
…but we’ll continue the story in our next travel log…
Lots of love
Sherpa Ced
Yak Tamer Avril
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