The Adventures of Smell and Snott: May 2007

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Langtang trek 3 - Over the pass

So after some fun in the snow at Kyangin we headed down (to 1660m) and then up again towards our highest point, the Laurenbina La pass at 4610m. As we may have mentioned, the Nepali people are lovely but have this annoying habit of making tracks that go over the mountains instead of around them. They probably invented the term 'As the crow flies' and so we use the term 'Nepali Flat' a lot - up and down, up and down, up and down......

Along the way we were very happy to find someone with a battery charger to lend us, as we used up all our camera batteries taking photos of snow, and being organised as alway, we hadn't charged our other batteries before the trek. Luckily a nice French girl saved us. And the next day we ended up following their group, because we got lost on the way to our original destination, so gave up and decided to follow the groups with guides, even though it did entail a 1700m climb in one day - we earnt a beer that night! The view was amazing up at Laurenbinayak - see a movie we took at a Stupa nearby.

We visited the holy Gosaikunda lakes at 4380m, which were surprisingly warm at the edges (Hindu faithful bathe in them in summer - brrrr!) and then crossed the pass the next day (see the picture above). Neither of us had ever trekked in snow before so we were a bit frightened (Shell especially) and there were a few stops for Shell to cry and Scott to say "It'll be ok baby, we can do it". Actually, if not for some helpful pointers from an English birdwatcher, we might have given up and turned back. There was one section of snow that looked particularly scary with a big drop beside it, that Shell made Scott climb halfway down the hill to go around, and then climb back up through what we discovered (the hard way) to be thorn bushes. Still, we made it and it was gorgeous!

Then it was a few days trek back to Kathmandu through a different sort of landscape - terraced hillsides and lovely little villages and cows instead of yaks. We were ready to stop by the end of 16 days, but coming back to civilisation was a bit of a culture shock. The food in Kathmandu is so much better and cheaper than mountain food - of course you have to pay for someone to carry everything up there on their backs, so you don't complain! All together we had a brilliant time, and are now the proud owners of sturdy calves and pert bottoms!

N.B. we worked out that a lot of our videos weren't actually visible unless we gave a direct link to them. So now we've made them visible - if you follow the Our Videos link in the right hand column you can have a look at lots of them!

Shell writing her diary

Climbing 1700m....

Well-deserved beer after 1700m climb!

Checking out the guide book at Laurenbinayak

Shell and the Gosaikunda Lake

Scott on a frozen river

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Langtang trek 2 - Snow in Kyangin!!!!!

It snowed. Wow overnight it had snowed at least two inches and we awoke 5am the next day acting like kids. And even better, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it lasted like that all morning. Now if you’ve ever been high in the mountains, you probably realise that clouds normally start appearing pretty quick in the morning and don’t leave all day ruining all your views and atmosphere, but luckily we were free to walk down the valley in the snow, giggling, taking about 100 photos, making a snow man, Scott writing his name in the snow and awing at the absolute beauty and spectacular mountain peaks which were all around us. It was perfect!!!

Have a look at a movie we took

we 'made' a friend - scott's first ever snowman!

on our long walk

yak and yak impersonator

Kyangin covered in snow at dawn

Langtang trek 1 - off we go again!

So after 12 days trekking in Annapurna, you’d suspect we’d have enough of tired legs, sore shoulders and freezing nights but just 10 nights after we stepped off the Annapurna range we were on a bus heading for the Langtang Mountains. Unfortunately it didn’t start quite as we planned. As we were packing up our stuff before heading for the bus, Shell said, “I don’t feel so well.”

Long story short, three days later Shell had developed Giardia, which is a bacterial parasite quite common in the Nepalese water. We’ve read it can take up to three weeks to develop in your system so she probably got it in the Annapurna region.

So we camped out in a town called Lama Hotel (funny name for town, I know) and stayed at a place called Friendly Guest House. We initially chose the place because it offered us a good discount but it ended up more than living up to its name.

The old constantly smiling lady there had some Japanese natural medicine for digestion problems called Seirogan (don’t ask where the hell she got it from), but she gave Shell that for a couple of days and next thing we know she’s good as new – damn those Japanese are the bomb at making everything!!!

Anyway the next couple of nights we climbed slowly up to the peak of the first part of our journey, a village called Kyanjin Gompa at 3730m. It was a beautiful little climb that started through the forest, which always took Shelley ages to pass through, sometimes to poo and sometimes to explain to Scott something botanical that he normally didn’t listen to and said “Yes Dear”

Once the forest cleared we started to get a tantalizing view of the spectacular Langtang range, with its peaks in the distance and all around us slowly starting to swallow us within as we climbed deeper into its belly.

We saw loads of cool little things on the way, including some amazingly brightly coloured Tibetan people, with all the women wearing belts that hung fabric from behind them, starting from their waist and falling to their ankles, decorated with large horizontal stripes of all types of different colours. Pretty much every woman we saw around these regions would wear one of these belts.

But Scott’s favourite sight around this range (other than the mountains – oh sorry yes and of course you too Shell - blurgh) was the yows. What’s a yow you say. Glad you asked. A yow is a cross breed between a yak and a cow. They supposedly give more milk than a yak or a cow but like most things, the male is useless and infertile. Anyway they are so funny coz most the time they just look like hairy long overweight cows but with slightly more placid faces. Its hard to explain. You have to see one to know what we mean.

So on our 5th night in the Langtang mountains, at Kyanjin Gompa, we went to sleep in a cloud. The weather had turned pretty bad and we didn’t have high expectations for the next day but we went to sleep hopeful and awoke very joyful for we had received a fantastic present overnight and the next day turned out to be one of the best days we’ve had on the trip so far....