April 19 - 21, Kathmandu, Lukla, Benkar

Saturday, April 19 - Kathmandu

Arrive Kathmandu after spending the night in Delhi. The previous day was spent on planes from San Francsico to Delhi. I took some ambian, a drug to help you sleep, and slept for about 7 hours. This is a first folks! I will be a repeat customer.

I have a window seat on the north side of the plan from Delhi to Kathmandu which gives me a great view of the Himalaya in northern India and eastern Nepal. I see Machupachare and Annapurna just before landing in Kathmandu.

Khum Subedi, one of the principals of Unique Adventures, the trekking company I have signed up, puts a beautiful (but smelly) flower wreath over my head upon arrival. It's nice to be greeted, I'm able to brush off all the taxi drivers pestering me. The Australians I was to trek/climb with have bagged their trip and I re-evaluate my plans. Decide to do the Everest Base Camp trek followed by Island Peak climb. Previous plan was to climb Mera Peak but in reviewing a detailed map here in Kathmandu, the views will be much better from Island Peak, and doing both peaks is prohibitively expensive.

I spend some time talking to Khum about the recent Maoist election win in Nepal. He says he was surprised at the result, but Nepal needs a change and he is optimistic that things will improve. His fear is that the maoists tend to be poorly educated and will struggle initially with a lot of the government infrastructure already in place. Khum acknowledges that the government has been plagued with corruption and that the populace needs to be better educted to have a chance to reduce the corruption. Khum is also worried about the reception the rest of the world will give the new Maoist government. If the US and other countries reduce their already small investments in Nepal, it will hurt the country.

I thought the air was full of goo in Delhi but Kathmandu is much worse. It makes for a nice red ball sunset but aside from that, I want to escape to the mountains (I'm assuming they will be relatively clear).

The couple in the room next door are Kathmandu regulars (4 weeks per year) and suggest I walk three blocks down the street to the Kathmandu Guest House for dinner. They think it would be a smooth intro to Kathmandu for me. I concur, heading down the street and immediately get horribly lost. Being male, I use dead reckoning with stoicism to get further and further from my goal. After thirty minutes I capitulate and decide to employ a strategy that worked in India, asking school age children for directions. Immediately, a small group of young children approach me and speak a few words of English to me. They jabber amongst themselves and when I repeat my question of, "Where is Thamel?" (Thamel is the tourist part of the city is likely the best known quarter in the city.) They fix me with blank stares and babble some words in Nepali. I repeat a similar exercise several times and determine I need to modify my plan.

Plan B - I seek out a chemist shop (pharmacy in the US). I figure that many of the drugs have English names and the "chemists" are likely better educated than most Nepalis. I hit pay dirt. He points me up a hill and says go left. I hurry along as I'm getting hungry. I see another tourist consulting a map and approach with my best, "Are you lost too?"

"No", he replies, "Just looking for a restaurant."

"Can you please point me to Thamel?"

Soon I'm at the Kathmandu Guest House restaurant sipping a margarita (hey, this place is pretty civilized! I had a hard time finding margies in India), and enjoying tandoori chicken. Predictably, I get lost on the way back to hotel and this time use my new strategy to quickly find my way.

---------------------------------------------

Sunday, April 20 - Kathmandu

Khum introduces me to the guide who is to lead my trek and climb. I get concerned when they ask me if I brought a rope, snow pickets and ice screws. I relate to Khum that I asked him repeatedly for a gear list and the short list that he returned had no such gear. Frankly, I'm stunned that a climbing outfit would not have a supply of this stuff and I tell him so. He backpedals and says he will provide this gear. He tells me of other trips that Lall, my guide, has lead up Everest, Pumori, Ama Dablam, Dahlagiri and other gnarly mountains. It emerges that each of these big expeditions brought all their own gear. Slowly he restores my confidence but I will reserve judgement until I see Lall in action on the mountain. (Lal turned out to be a very good guide who speaks pretty good English and ensured that I had a good time.)

Khum takes me to lunch. It is obvious that he is concerned that I am unhappy and he very much wants to make sure I am happy. I am happy, just concerned that Khum's company seems flaky compared to US standards. I vow to work with Khum to put in place a proper check list that he can send out to clients and avoid these misunderstandings in the future.

Kathmandu has rotating power outages to conserve energy. They don't have enough energy for the whole country to be on the grid at same time. I go with the flow and update my blog on the computer as power permits.

--------------------------
Monday April 21 - KTH to Lukla to Benkar

Flying from Kathmandu to Lukla is like nothing I've ever seen. When landing, you come in way high and then drop like a stone at the last minute. The airstrip is about 1000 feet long so there is no margin for error. It rises with an 8% grade which helps to slow planes. To take off, the planes fly down the runway in the opposite direction. One direction to land, the opposite direction for take off, regardless of wind. Oh, and the chances of doing a go-around are very low, you must nail the landing on the first try. Quite an experience.

Lukla

Lal hires a porter to carry, "The Mother of God", my big Jansport wheeled bag. It contains my plastic climbing boots, ice axe, crampons, a bunch of camping gear like sleeping bag and pad, as well as extra clothes. I think it is enormous (hence the name), but when I look at some of the loads the porters carry, I realize it's no big deal for them. 

We hike for 3 or 4 hours before stopping in Benkar for the night. It is common for trekkers to feel that each day is wimpy, but the stopping point each day is dictated not by how many hours you hike, but by elevation gain. They recommend that you limit elevation gain to 1500 feet per day.  Most of the dwellings along the trail are constructed of stone. It is the most readily available building material, even though it takes longer to build a stone house than a house from wood.

Watching the Nepalese build a house or lodge is quite something. The first step is for porters to carry baskets containing as many rocks as they can carry (usually about 220 pounds) and deposit these rocks at the job site. The rocks will typically have dimensions between 6 and 18 inches and are irregular in shape. Two groups set to work on this large pile of rocks, one group reduces the rocks down to 1 inch in size to be used in making concrete. The other, more skilled group, uses hammer and chisel to create rectangular blocks. After some of these blocks have accumulated, a yet more skilled group of laborers join the team and fashion walls from the blocks. 

In one location I see men with a large sledge hammer breaking up a 10 foot piece of bedrock that is located where they want the basement to be. It is amazing to see what can be done with primitive tools if you have time and manpower at your disposal. The dwellings look great when they are completed.

The locals seem more reserved and talk less than the people I encountered in India. The tourist density is higher along the main trekking corridor and the locals are likely more jaded here.