Trekking!!!!

Alright, I know these pictures have been a long time coming....but hopefully they are worth the wait! Before school started, I was able to get in my first trekking experience in Nepal. My roommate Pat and I went trekking on the Helambu circuit which is just north of Kathmandu. I was very, very happy to be trekking with someone who had already been out on the trails. Figuring out the transportation and lodging was a little intimidating, but Pat handled it like a pro, which made everything work out great. The trek took us 6 days and to be honest, it kick my butt pretty good. But, no matter, the sweat was worth it, the views and experience were great, and I can't wait to do another! So, let's get right to the pictures....


After taking three micros and a bus we arrived at the start of our trek and were met with a decent set of stairs (which I later realized was nothing compared to he next day). The start of the trek cut through the Shivapuri National Forest.

After trekking for most of the day, we made friends on the trail with a family walking up to their village. Let me preface this picture by saying that women in Nepal are awesome. They do most of the work in the fields and work incredibly hard. A teenage girl was carrying this bag of rice on her head up the hill to the village....we were told it weighed 30 kilos! Carrying heavy loads with a strap over the head is how almost everything is transported here....vegetables, wheat, bricks, dirt, and rice, and notice the huge pipe being carried by the Nepali man in the background whose load wheighed something close to 50 kilos. Pat wanted to try it out and carried the load for the last few hours of our hike...up a very steep climb! I barely made it up with my backpack and after a full day of walking was very happy for a rest.

We stayed with the family with who we were walking. Most of the village was related somehow. Chipling was just a small group of houses up on top of the hill surrounded by terraced fields. Villages on trekking routes usually have "lodges" like the picture here. The family usually has a few extra room in the house for trekkers. They provide tea, dinner, and breakfast...and you can usually negotiate a price around 200 or 300 rupees per person.

These are the kids of the family we stayed with. The oldest girl with the blue headscarf was the one carrying the bag of rice up the hill! The whole family was really nice, and we sat with them to share our rice and some very tasty meat with spinach!

The view out our window on the first morning. We had climed up through these fields the day before!

The next morning we set out for another long day of walking. After having a little confusion finding the trail, we reached the top of one of many hills and found this small temple, which I think is called a gumba surrounded by prayer flags. The prayer flags are Buddhist, but some places of prayer seem to have a mix of Hindu and Buddist symbols here.

After hiking out of the Shivapuri Forest, we were inbetween two different park areas. We reached the Langtang National Park during our second day, and our trek took us through the southern most part of the park. We did get some good views, but further north in the Langtang Park the Himals are really impressive.

We hiked on into the late afternoon on the second day, and I was beat! This small lodge we finally reached had never looked so good! I even fell asleep before dinner, but the lodge was nice and we had a good sleep.

Waking up to a view of the Himals the next morning was well worth the extra hours on the trail the day before!