Tsum valley trekking itinerary for 16 april (18 days) – hoping for good weather
Thursday, April 14th, 2011Tonight we were invited to our guides home – Wow what an nice experience! They treated us like royalty with a special New Years dinner (by the way today is the first day of the new year! – everything here operates on the Nepali calender and the new year stats today, they have just had 2 days of celebrations which were quite something) We saw the old house and the new house. Even Alex had to duck his head under most of the doors. The cooked over an open fire on the top level so the roof of the kitchen was all black. The house is in a building of many houses all attached together about 10 feet wide and 4 stories high, wooden structure with brick outside.
Our trekking plan for the next 18 days is in the Tsum valley. This area opened up in 2008 to trekking and hopefully it will be interesting for some Tibetan culture since it is very close to the Tibetan border. We might also get up to the Ganesh Himal Base Camp if the weather is good enough. The highest elevation will be around 4500m which is not too high and shouldn’t cause any problems for the kids – they have often been around 4000m.
The preliminary itinerary is as follows:
april 16 – drive 10 hrs from Kathmandu to Arughat, day 2 – trek Arughat to Liding (4hrs), day 3 – trek to Machhakhola (5 hrs), day4 – trek to Jagat (6 hrs), day5 – trek to Lokpa (5 hrs), day6 – trek to Cunling (4 hrs), day7 – trek to Chhokangparo (8 hrs), day8 – trek to Chhule-Nile (5 hrs), day9 – trek to Mu Gompa (3 hrs), day10- trek to Dupchet, day 11 – trek to Rachen Gompa, day 12 – Dumje, day 13 – up to Ganesh Himal Base Camp if all goes well, then the next days are back down the valley (but it is pretty up and down even though the general tendency is down!)
Andre