thewills'wanderings

As part of celebrating Adventure Specialties 25th anniversary trekking and climbing in Nepal was a perfect choice for a celebration. What was even better was that with a bit of juggling around we could fit it in to our world trip plans.

Tim, Lyndsay and Mark wanted to attempt a high peak so it was decided that trekking in the Langtang Valley for all of us with some high peaks for the “real” climbers would be a good option. We employed Sherpa Adventures to arrange it for us, which went right against our good old kiwi do-it-yourself style. We are sure are glad we did though, it was great having everything arranged for us.

Heading off from Kathmandu, we had the 12 of us, 5 porters and Hari our absolutely wonderful ,hero guide who now feels like part of the family. We had a private bus to get us to the start of our trek. The bus ride was a gruelling 10 hour trip on a very hairy, scary, dirt, rocky, road high up in the mountains where there seems to be only room for one vehicle but the drivers seem to be able to deal with on-coming traffic. For me the bus ride there and back was by far the hardest, scariest part of travel so far, Now that I’m back, safe and sound, I can look back on it without breaking out in a cold sweat. As you can imagine Tim loved it.(very sick man!)

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Just thought I’d say a quick hi to everyone and let you know that we’ll be out of contact for about 20 days. We’ve just returned from our trip to Haibung, a remote village north of Kathmandu. We spent a night at the headquartrers of Share and Care Nepal(who are supported by Tear Fund NZ), learning about what they do and how we could help. We then went by jeep to a village they work with, where we painted their school, played games with the kids from the village and just hung out. It was an awesome time, very challenging in many ways. It was a shock to see how poor the people were and the tragic state of the school, but so cool to contribute something. We have some great photos which we’ll post when we get back from our trek. We’re leaving tomorrow for the Langtang Valley, (a long, slow bus ride). We have our own bus and driver, which will be far better than the public bus. We’ll also take with us our 6 porters, which is going to feel very weird! Last week we met Darma Sherpa who will be the climbing guide for the climb that Tim, Lyndsay and Mark will do. He brought his 2 children with him to meet us at our hotel which the girls enjoyed. It was amazing to find out that he was educated at a school that Edmund Hillary set up here in Nepal!

Anyway, it’s after midnight and I have to get up in 5 hours so I must dash.

By the way, thanks for all the birthday wishes. I had a pretty amazing birthday. It was our last night in the village and the workers there put on a big Nepali dinner which included 2 chickens which Tim and Mark took great joy in killing. I’ll try to stop Tim posting photos of that!

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