A trek is not just a geographical displacement; it is always a change in consciousness. Here is where it started, in Dhulikhel, just outside the main urban area of Kathmandu, in the early morning haze. The discussion of this haze, as part of a massive bank of pollution from the North Indian plain and how…
Author: ianraitt
Langtang in Winter
Day 0: Wednesday 12 February 2020There was a window of opportunity in February, before work obligations in the spring. Covid was just starting its march across the world. Could there be a quick trip to Nepal, as the recorded cases of coronavirus were so far tiny? A convenient short winter trek would be Langtang. Memory…
Gokyo to Everest Base Camp: returning to Salleri
Sunday January 13th, 2019. Amazingly this is Day 18. Coming down is all part of the experience, and allows a retrospective contemplation, but while most trekkers stop at Lukla, and then take a plane ride back to Kathmandu, with more time on our hands we have elected to walk out to Salleri, the way we…
Gokyo to Everest Base Camp (part 2)
Lower altitude permitted some sleep last night. It is snowing, and all views have disappeared, only the sense of the gulf down to the river. Quiet, with that sense of mystery and stillness. After a steep rise, the path is contouring round. A yak follows us. There are footprints in the snow, but surely not…
Gokyo to Everest Base Camp (Part 1)
5th January 2019A gentle sense of achievement flushes the veins, as in the bright air we start to descend: there will be scalding soup at Gokyo, and in gradually waning afternoon light, views will open up besides frozen brooks. Colder air, wisps of mist condensing, calm silence; only busy ducks will forage in the waters…
Toward the Unknown Region
This eloquent title belongs to a poem in Walt Whitman´s Leaves of Grass. It begins: Darest thou now, O Soul,Walk out with me toward the unknown region,Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow? The epithet ´unknown region´resonates, challenges. This is how we may feel at the end of the trail…
Altibajos …. or the ups and downs of the trek – and its exigencies
We have to accept ups and downs, so nicely captured in the Spanish word altibajos. But it is difficult not to resent losing the height one has gained. A particular example occurs up from Namche. After patiently climbing to the pass at Mong, the path descends all the way down to the river, yes the…
Take things as they come
Should we embrace a teleological view of the trek, that it only has meaning based on its purpose to complete its objective and arrive at the final point, or should we follow that impressive advice of Robert Louis Stevenson, ¨to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive¨? Dear reader, you will probably feel…
Zen and the art of trekking
Sometimes the contrast between the real and painful effort made during the trek and the imaginative mental projection of finally crossing the highest pass, and the way we compensate in planning how to present this ´triumph´to others, makes one think that one purpose of trekking is to bleach out all pretence and vainglory, vanity and…
Everest Region: to the Gokyo Lakes
Beginnings Exactly ten years ago, during the January school break in Nepal, when I was working in Kathmandu University High School, we planned to do the Everest Base Camp trek. I was intrigued to discover that the trails would be snow free, for the most part, and provided you could stand the cold, they would…
Khopra Ridge
Day 16 – Day 21: Tatopani to Nayapul We reached Tatopani by bus from Jomsom. This might have been the riskiest road I have travelled on, being beset by landslides and also being so narrow that the buses have to blast out warnings to oncoming traffic to permit a mutual passing place through consensual pauses….
Thorung La
Day 11: Shree Kharka to Yak Kharka All preliminaries cast aside, we must attempt the main challenge in the next three days, the high pass, the ancient trading route between Manang and Tibet, the Thorung La, standing at 5416m. The approach today is to the lodges at Yak Kharka. Verily this is Yak territory, and…
Tilicho Lake
Day 8: Manang to Shree Kharka The river is a diminished current now, meandering across a stony flood plain that the monsoon rains pulsing down relentlessly from above submerge in their annual flood. The next lodge at Shree Kharka is above 4000m, so the altitude is starting to bite. And in the distance further above…
Round Annapurna – Bhul Bhule to Manang – Days 1-7
Round Annapurna (Bhul Bhule to Manang – 7 days) Despite having lived in Nepal earlier for a total of almost four years, I had never done the famous Annapurna Circuit. So here goes! The pre-trip journey was a numbing drive on minibus from Kathmandu to Beshisahar, with the constant mental message to the driver ……